


Ace of Hearts

by CrescentMoonDemon



Series: Amalgamation [2]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Bay Movies), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Between Movies, Brotherly Love and Rivalry, But Still Very Much Friends, Canon Divergent If You Squint, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Drabble Collection, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, In which I write whatever the hell I want with no regards for any kind of plot, Kissing, Language, Maybe - Freeform, Occasional angst, Raphril - Freeform, Shameless Feel-Good Fic, Slice of Life, Some Plot, Very episodic, adult conversations, lots of humor, most chapters will be short but others will be long, plot eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 21,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrescentMoonDemon/pseuds/CrescentMoonDemon
Summary: If you can make it in this city, you can make it anywhere—that’s what they say. April thrives amidst the chaos of New York City, but every now and then she loves nothing more than to step back, take a breath, and savor the moments with the people (and mutants) she loves.
Relationships: April O'Neil/Raphael (TMNT)
Series: Amalgamation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738846
Comments: 33
Kudos: 81





	1. Wear It Well

**Author's Note:**

> A drabble collection in which I write basically whatever the heck I want with no regard for plot and a haphazard sense of timeline at best; seriously, I promise I’m trying to keep events in chronological order but I’ve jumped around so much while writing it’s hard to keep track aaaahhhhhhhhhh bear with me plz
> 
> I had so much fun writing _Thaw_ a while back that I wanted to continue with Raph and April’s relationship, only I had no concept of any kind of plot for a story, only sporadic scenes and events, so fuck-it we’re getting a drabble dump with bits of plot and storyline instead! Ack!
> 
> I hope you enjoy anyway!! I certainly have!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief explanation for the wardrobe changes between movies.

Slivers of black sprinkled down his face as Raph cussed internally at the close call, throwing his weight back in time to avoid the second katana being swung at his head. Keeping the momentum, his hands hit pavement and his feet connected with the jaw of the Foot Clan soldier. He felt the resulting _pop_ all the way to his knee, the guy hit pavement a few feet away, and when Raph was on the ground next it was with a better distance between himself and his enemies.

“Hey! I liked those shades,” he barked furiously, eyes locked with the masked face of the next sucker honed in on him.

“They were broken anyway,” Don threw back, rag-dolling another Foot goon off the end of his bo staff.

_“So?”_

His fist thudded on the chest of the next candidate; the air rushed out of the thug in one enormous wallop, and when he fell he did not try to get back up. 

Squaring up for the next, Raph grumbled, “Still liked ‘em.”

* * *

“Like friggin’ _windchimes_ , Leo,” Raphael gnarled through clenched teeth. “What’s one o’ the traits to bein’ a ninja? _Stealth!_ You gave us away with those stupid things!”

Leo may have been able to let the abuse slide—it wasn’t unlike nerves to stay frayed a while after the end of a bad fight—but the worst sting was the truth behind it. His bamboo pegs had rattled at the worst possible time, and the resulting fight had not ended well for them with Donatello paying the highest price.

Raph stepped up, sneering down with magma in his mouth, and Leo stood, chest-to-chest, to meet him.

“Take those ridiculous things off,” Raph growled.

“Or you’ll _what_?” he returned, voice low but eyes crackling with icy fury. His muscles were still coiled, itching with unspent adrenaline. He pleaded for Raph to lay a hand on him. To give him the excuse.

Raph said nothing, and where Leo may have found victory in his silence he instead felt it like teeth at his throat. When their chests bumped, the bamboo pegs rattled. 

Leo wrenched the drape off. The cording snapped like thread, and it clattered in a heap where it fell. Raph grinned, toothy and victorious, and took the first step back.

* * *

“Whoa, hey, watch the goods, Foot-boi!” Mikey sprung back on his hands, keeping the momentum going with his leg spin and hurling himself into the air. Stars whizzed past him, their blades whistling as they sliced nothing but air.

He landed in a clean split in the divide between two dumpsters.

He checked himself. Not a scratch!

“Hah! Missed mee _eeeE **E** —Yeep!_”

Mike bent sharply backward to avoid a second hail of stars. A sudden slackening across his body startled him. The straps across his chest gave up the ghost right then, the cross-point at his center having met with the tell-tail slice of a star blade clean through either strap, and his shell necklace unraveled into a scattered pile of fragments on the asphalt below him.

He felt those losses like a kick in the shell; that was his favorite necklace! But the sorrow would have to wait for later. He dropped the stance. Landing again on his hands, Mikey flipped back and sprung off the brick wall to catch one guy in the gut with his nunchuck. To the one who threw the stars, he dealt the sweet justice of a swift whip in the ass with one of his lost belts.

* * *

Two things above all frustrated Donatello to admit: some things could just not be fixed, and other things—while not broken—could outlive their usefulness. 

A portable solar charging unit for his gear? Totally, 100% practical! But in actuality? When were they even in a well-lit enough area outside the lair for solar cells to gain enough charge to make a difference?

Answer: rarely!

And certainly not often enough to warrant their tedious upkeep and the difficulty in locating replacement parts, which were needed regularly.

Admitting defeat, Donnie shelved his solar tassets in favor of a simple set of army green cargo pants with ample pocket space. Finding a new use for them at a later date would not be difficult; they were still a valuable piece of equipment, after all. But, without them, there came the dilemma of how to keep his equipment charged in the event he was away from a source of alternating current for an extended period.

“Hey, Mikey, where did you file those schematics for the micronized dry cells I drew up last week?”

Mike stilled mid-sit-up and let himself hang from the pullup bar, his upper lip skewed in absolute confusion. “The what for the who-say-what-now?”

“My schematics for the—the tiny ball batteries I was telling you about! Yay-big, drawn on green graph paper? You tried to use it as a napkin for that calamari pizza?”

“Oh, that one! Third drawer, second from the right. Yeah, that one. Man, I’m hungry, now. You want anything? I could _really_ go for seafood. Hey, Leo, what do you say about sardines on white sauce?”

“You’re disgusting, Mike,” Leo replied without looking up from his book, “sardines only work on red sauce.”

Mike began to argue the merits of the combination, but Don was already tuning them out.

* * *

“I’m a simple woman, Raphael,” April cooed. Her fingers glided over the textured surface of his new arm guard, seeming to enjoy it.

“Yeah?” he replied cleverly, wishing she’d go on. Talking. Touching. Anything, really. Just don’t stop.

He watched the path her fingers took up his bicep to his shoulder plate, already scuffed from the hits it took from those dime store raiders a few nights back.

April smiled, teeth dazzling white behind red lips. It took him a second to realize he stopped breathing watching her fingers descend one of the straps across his chest. He felt the minute pressure through it on his plastron, dragging slowly downward. Never once straying its course, never outright touching him. Teasing.

“Yes. You see, when I see a button. . . .” She began, her words trailing as she leaned up on her tip toes, and Raph bent to meet her. “. . . I _press_ it.”

Her knuckle hit the release, and his chest straps flung back so fast over his shoulders he didn’t have time—or the presence of mind—to catch them before they retracted into the anchor point on the back of his shell.

Raph gaped incredulously while she grinned like the perfectly magnificent hellion that she was, looking far, far too pleased with herself.

He smirked.

“Oh, you’re gonna get it, April.”

April giggled. Never the tiniest bit phased by his threats whether they were genuine or not. If anything, she looked forward to when he held true to them. The mark of a true troublemaker. 

“And the shorts are a nice touch, too. You wear them well.” She winked, turned halfway, and bumped his thigh with her hip. Then, a little more privately, she murmured only for him to hear, “Can’t wait to get you out of them sometime.”

Raph whistled appreciatively. He watched her hips sashay away and didn’t give a damn that he was blushing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This collection is a direct follow-up to [Thaw](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22997752/chapters/54984709)! If you have not read that, I sincerely encourage you to do so as some later content and references may not make sense otherwise! Thank you and bless you for reading my work! <3


	2. Wide Open

“Well, I haven’t seen it since I was a little girl. Mom supposedly set it up so a caretaker comes by every month to look after things.”

“It’s just out there in the middle of nowhere?” Mikey tilted his head, likely picturing some horror movie setup featuring thick, woodsy brambles and a dilapidated shack with a rusty van parked out front.

“It’s in the woods but it’s not the middle of nowhere. There are farms around. It’s a nice place from what I remember. Two stories with an attic and a root cellar. I don’t think the powerlines were good, though; I remember our appliances always shorted out.”

“What did your father use it for?” Donnie asked. 

April shrugged. “Fortress of Solitude, maybe? I was so young; I don’t think the idea of a vacation home even meant anything to me back then. Anyway, we never go there anymore.”

Mike and Don exchanged looks of amazement.

“Why not?” Leo asked. He leaned his weight on his forearms, expression brimming with interest.

“There’s no reason to,” April said. 

It wasn’t a lie, just not the truth.

There were too many memories there, too many that might hurt to revisit. April still remembered her last summer at the house before the fire: combing through the garden for the reddest tomatoes until her father’s excited cheer called her over, how he gingerly parted a row of leaves to show her a tiny green chrysalis attached to the bottom of a twig. He pointed out other little cocoons among other plants, and April thought how ‘milkweed’ sounded like it tasted bad on cereal. That day, she learned how chunky little caterpillars turned into pretty butterflies. 

“So you’re sayin’ your family’s got a whole vacation home out in BFE that you never use? That literally no one goes to or knows about?” Raph raised an eyebrow.

April shrugged again.

“No one but me and my mom and maybe one other guy,” she admitted. 

Mikey beamed and looked at Splinter hopefully.

“Road trip?” he asked. 

But Splinter stoically shook his head, and the elation drained out of them.

“Our place is here, my sons,” Splinter said simply.

Some protests followed, but ultimately no one refuted it. Despite hopes and dreams, the guys all knew where and when to temper their expectations. Even if April did not agree, she could not offer protest.


	3. Excuse

“You know you don’t need an excuse to visit me, right?” she said, cheek pillowed in her palm as she watched him clamber through the window frame from her workstation at the coffee table. 

Raph came through quickly, yanked the window down with a crisp _snap_ , and drew the curtains after him. 

“Just wanna keep Leo off my case,” he explained. 

April smirked. 

“Yes, because the absolute worst thing that could happen would be for him to think we were in some kind of a relationship where we go out of our way to see each other. That would just be terrible. Truly horrible.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. Raphael came to her side and crouched down. Curling one finger beneath her chin, he gave her a tiny tap that saw April tipping her head up to meet his face, but their eyes were zeroed in on each other’s mouths. 

“Smart ass,” he grinned. 

“You like it.”

“You know, I think I’m really startin’ to.”

Raph leaned in, and April caught his lips in the middle of her giggle.


	4. Toes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise there will be longer chapters soon, I just really like cute little interactions like these TTuTT

April stared up at him, brow furrowed and eyes critical.

“You’re too tall,” she stated matter-of-factly. 

“Nah. You’re just short.”

April frowned. Tipping out of her shoes, she placed one foot then the other one top of his, braced her hands on his upper arms, and leaned up to press a kiss into his mouth. It took a good stretch, but she managed.

She grinned smugly and wiggled her toes, pleased as much by the extra inches it gave her as Raphael’s quizzical expression. 

“Much better,” she affirmed.

Raph smirked. “Shorty.”

“Mammoth.”

“Pipsqueak.”

“Neander _tall_.”

Donatello snorted grape Fanta out his nose from his workstation not far away.


	5. Sharp Shootin’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewatched TMNT 2k14 and god it's a cringefest. So many plotholes my car needs suspension repairs. Our boys deserved better.

“Have you ever trained on a weapon?” Splinter asked.

His tone was soft, but April could not help jumping at the shock of him suddenly right behind her. Her face flushed with embarrassment to have been caught in the dojo; she jerked her hands away from their investigation of the weapons wall and clasped guiltily behind her back.

One furred eyebrow raised but remained otherwise silent. 

“No. I mean, I took six months of Taekwondo in elementary school and messed around a little with a guy who threw knives in college, but I wouldn’t count that toward anything,” she admitted, looking down.

Splinter nodded slowly. With a clawed hand, he gestured to the spot on the wall she’d been admiring. “Yet the bow has clearly caught your eye.”

April was not about to argue facts with the sagely rat. It had indeed caught her eye. The weapons wall was adorned in an impressive arsenal. She particularly admired the longbow which hung there. It had a long, elegantly sweeping curve to its red wood frame, and it was nearly as long as she was tall.

“It’s beautiful,” she said freely. And probably had a draw strength greater than what she could bench press. 

“Would you like to learn it?” 

“Would you teach me?” April perked up, perhaps a little too quickly.

A twinkle rose in the wet blackness of Splinter’s eyes. He stepped up and took another bow, this one smaller and far more practically sized, and a rack of arrows from their hooks on the wall. He said nothing as he turned, but April followed close behind.

* * *

“Back straight. Shoulders square. Keep your feet at shoulder width and perpendicular to your target,” Splinter instructed patiently. 

She did her best to follow his instructions, but a gentle claw was still placed on her forearm to correct something.

“Rotate your elbow or the string may catch you when you fire.” Splinter took up a stance alongside her, and April did her best to mirror it. He raised both arms, one outstretched before him, and the other drew back on a phantom string. “Straight and steady. Do not lean. Your limbs should be firm but not locked.”

From the archway behind them, Mikey whisper-shouted, “T-Pose for dominance!”

Her form stuttered as she fought not to laugh. Mikey yelped when two sharp wallops came from either side of him.

“Silence, please,” was all Splinter had to say, and they received it. He lowered his arms and stepped out of April’s periphery. “You may fire whenever you are ready.”

April took a breath to steady herself. The arrows she was firing had no tips, and Splinter had loosened the bowstring so she could first get a feel for its handling without worrying about the draw strength. The most nerve-wracking part was the audience. Another breath passed through her nose to settle herself, and April pulled back on the string, drawing the fletching back towards her cheek while making sure not to touch her face.

She released. The notch came off the string at the last possible second, and the bow dryfired with a sharp _thwang_. Four simultaneous winces sounded behind her. April bit the inside her cheek to stifle a vile stream of cusses and shook her hand out briskly, palm and fingers stinging with the harshness of those vibrations alone.

Splinter reappeared. He took his stance again and waited for her to follow.

“Again,” he said.

April picked the arrow up off the floor and docked it again, more critical of the alignment of her fingers this time around. She looked at her feet, adjusted to ensure one was slightly ahead of the other, and straightened her shoulders so they were directly above her feet.

“Look at where you want the arrow to go. With practice, it will find its way there,” Splinter instructed.

April kept her gaze downrange and eyed the concentric red and blue circles of her target. In the center was a bright yellow smiley face sticker winking back at her, and she felt as if it were her life’s mission to punch a hole clean through its forehead.

“When you are ready, April.”

April waited for a comment from the peanut gallery, but when none came she settled herself with another, slower breath. She drew back the string, picturing the arrow’s path as a straight line from her to the center of the target. Then she frowned; the tension on the string was not very high, and there were some twenty yards between her and the target. Remembering that gravity would only pull down on an object travelling a straight path, she raised her angle by a few inches, let her air out through her nose, and released.

The arrow left cleanly, barely a whisper of noise as the fletching sailed past the recurve, and she heard the shrill _thunk_ as it sank into Styrofoam. The arrow hit maybe two inches shy of the smiley.

The guys absolutely lost their minds behind her. 

Mikey, Don, and Raph appeared at either side of her, so hyped they looked positively spring loaded. Raph slung one huge arm across her shoulders and pulled her head into a congratulatory noogie. 

“Oh my god, April, you almost hit it! That was such a great shot! I can’t believe it! On your first try—that was _so_ great!” Mikey exclaimed, fingers framing his head. _Mind blown._

“Your trajectory was perfect! A few millimeters left and you’d have hit it dead on the mark! That was incredible! How’d you calculate the trajectory on the fly like that?” Don said in a rush, hands clenched and eyes wide behind his glasses.

April grinned sheepishly and shoved out from under Raph’s grinning hold to smooth her hair down. “Honestly? I just eye-balled it.”

“Then you have a natural talent, April. It should be cultivated,” Splinter said while pulling his claws thoughtfully through his beard. Leo stood beside him, arms folded and smiling pleasantly. 

April looked at the bow in her hand and considered such an idea. Did she really? She looked at the aged rat, a bit in awe at the thought she could have a knack for something like this. 

“You really think so?” she asked.

Splinter nodded, a soft smile to his long, genial face. He gestured a claw downrange.

“Now. Again.”

* * *

April winced. Everything ached, not just her shoulders. She felt it from her fingertips down to her ankles, but _especially_ in her shoulders.

“Sorry, April,” Leo apologized, doing his best not to bind the gauze too tightly.

“It’s not you. The betadine just stings. If I’d known it would hurt this bad, I would have paid more attention to how close I was to the string,” she assured him, wishing maybe she had some Icy-Hot to slap on her back for good measure. 

“Experience is an excellent teacher. We’ve been bit by that bowstring more times than I care to count. I’m no good with a bow and arrow,” said Leo sympathetically.

“No? Hard to believe there’s anything you aren’t good at, Leo.”

He smiled at the compliment but shook his head humbly. “No one’s a master of everything. Especially not me.”

“Don’t let Mikey hear you say that. He’ll never let you live it down.”

Leo made a face like he agreed, and April winced again. Those welts were going to take _days_ to heal.

“Too bad experience is a dick of a teacher.” 

Leo snorted, and his chest shook as he laughed. He secured the gauze into place with two wrap clips, and April took her arm back to inspect. He’d done a thorough job. Betadine to clean the cuts made by careless strikes of the bow cord, antiseptic ointment on top of that, gauze to seal it, and an ace bandage with clips to hold it all in place.

Dropping her arms, she laid her wrists over her knees and realized they were sitting in the exact same position.

“Thank you, Leonardo,” she smiled.

He smiled, nodded. “Any time, April.”

His eyes darted over her shoulder, and a tiny tug at the corner of his mouth came as her only warning that something was about to happen. April turned her head quick only to receive a sticker stuck square on her nose. She recoiled at the unexpected invader. 

“Here. Nice shootin’, Ace. You earned that,” Raph grinned and ruffled a giant hand in her hair.

She glowered playfully up at him and peeled the crumpled sticker off to examine. The smiley face looked far less confident with a solid half-inch notch missing out of one side—even if that notch took over a hundred shots to land.

“I survived target practice with Master Splinter and all I got for it was this lousy sticker?” April took said sticker and slapped it on her forehead, crossed both arms, and proclaimed, “Damn straight I earned it.” 

Leo and Raph both roared riotously with laughter.


	6. Ink

“So, you guys do those yourselves?” 

April spoke before she realized what she was really saying, then felt dumb because, yes, of course they would have to. It wasn’t like they could walk into any tattoo parlor in the city and ask for a few rows of ink.

Leo looked up from where he sat cross-legged with Mikey seated similarly beside him, fully gloved-up holding some homemade apparatus with a tip more resembling the business end of a giant thumbtack than a tattooing needle.

“’Course! Not like we can just waltz into a shop and get ink done, April,” Mike said. 

He took a bottle from his makeshift station, sprinkled liquid lightly above where he was working, and wiped gingerly downward. The paper towel came back with light smears of black ink and red blood. Apparently, they were touching up the tribal band on Leo’s left bicep; a recent skirmish with the Foot had resulted in a gash that cut through some of the line work.

Leo was not the tiniest bit phased by any of it. Meanwhile April did her best not to seem queasy.

“Does the sight of blood bother you?” Leo asked, ready to have pity on her stomach if the answer was yes.

“Not—well, not my own blood. But that needle doesn’t exactly look friendly.” April took mercy on herself and just looked away. 

Mike snickered at her obvious discomfort but otherwise offered no comment. After adjusting the lay of the wire over his forearm, he returned to his task and the machine buzzed back to life.

“Normal tattoo needles can’t get through our scales,” Leo explained.

“But it’s _huge_ —doesn’t that hurt?” April said, incredulous.

“Of course it does.”

“Could’ve fooled me. You hide it well.”

“We’ve all worked up a fair tolerance to pain over many years of training. Meditation helps, too,” Leo offered as mediation, but he made no attempt to disavow the compliment.

Beside her, Raph’s deep voice chuckled. 

“ _You_ mediate. Some of us can just take the pain no probl’m,” he said gruffly. 

The racket ball he was bouncing sprung back off the wall with a noisy, hollow rattle, and each time it curbed back to him as if on a pre-set path. She wished he wouldn’t do that while Mikey was doing his thing, but his brothers seemed to have already tuned him out. Plus, April was pretty sure Leo would tell him to stop if either of them were worried about it.

April set her chin on her knee as she watched, eyes drawn back to Mikey’s look of intense concentration, complete with tongue pinched out the corner of his mouth, and the droning hum of his machine.

“It’s really cool that you guys can do that. I’ve always wanted to get a spot on the annual tattoo convention, but higher-ups want to keep the station ‘family friendly.’ Channel 7 always gets it instead,” she said somewhat ruefully.

“Funny how they got no problem doin’ bits on gang violence but body art? Hell no,” Raph scoffed.

April grunted in agreement. 

Her face scrunched up at a thought, and she added on a separate note, “Feet _suck_ to get done.”

The instant the words were out, three things happened simultaneously: the buzz of Mikey’s machine cut out, the racket ball sprung off at the wrong angle and went sailing into the depths of the lair, and three pairs of eyes zeroed in on her. She stiffened.

“Do you have tattoos, April?” Leo asked, surprised. After all, she’d spoken as if from experience. 

_Shit._ Cat: exit bag.

April resigned herself to the bombardment to come.

“A couple,” she admitted with something of a shy smile.

“No way,” Leo beamed.

Raph rocked back on his shell and sprung to a crouch immediately beside her. 

“I wanna see,” he eagerly exclaimed, eyes bright with interest.

“Hey! Share with the class,” Mikey protested; he was the furthest away from her.

April did not bother to dissuade them. Denying it or trying to hide it would only add fuel to their curiosity fires. So, April untied the laces of her boot and slipped off her sock. Raph stared as Leo and Mike craned their necks to see. On the top of her foot, a blue-purple-pink-red-green hummingbird hovered in flight above a cluster of purple-pink azalea flowers, caught on her skin as if by a photograph. Impressed “oohs” and whistles punctuated its reveal. April let her pant leg down and sat straight, lifting the side of her shirt where elegant swirls of dots, stripes, and diamond patterns resembled a linework chandelier extending up her side and higher beneath her clothes.

“They’re beautiful, April,” Leo said, his voice tinged with clear admiration. 

“Thank you.” She blushed, flattered.

“How can you be squeamish about blood but be fine sittin’ through ink like that?” Raph asked, gesturing to how extensive the one on her side was before she let her shirt back into place.

“My own blood doesn’t bother me so much; it’s other peoples’ that gets me.”

“Uhh, hello, are we just gonna ignore the most badass part to all this?” Mikey cut in, drawing their attention back. He gestured a gloved hand at her foot and side, thunderstruck. “Those are the _worst_ , most _painful_ spots to get tattoos, and they’re _detailed_! One’s full color and the other’s all lines!” He slapped his head with his wrist. “How high’s your pain threshold, Wonder Woman? Jeez!”

April wiggled shyly when all eyes were again on her and rubbed the back of her head, trying not to make a deal out of it.

“Pretty good, I guess?” she said sheepishly.

“More like _legendary_.”

“But Leo’s right. I zoned out during both of them, so that definitely helped me get through it.”

* * *

“Did they really hurt that bad?” Raph asked. 

April arched her eyebrow where she leaned back in her seat enjoying one of Donnie’s juice boxes. 

“Each one came with a few hundred thousand needle sticks—so, yeah,” she replied. 

“Well duh. I mean on ribs ‘n feet.”

“I wanted to literally die at a few points. I gross cried for my foot.”

He raised an eyebrow back. “You said you zoned out.”

“I did.” More like passed out. “A few times.”

Raph chuffed.

“Did _that_ hurt?” She gestured at his arm.

He looked at the kanji etched into his right shoulder; the scars there were raised and a lighter color than the rest of his scales, so it popped dramatically in certain lighting.

“Oh, that. Yeah, it did,” he said simply. Like he’d forgotten it even existed. 

“What made you do scarification instead of a tattoo?”

Raph shrugged. “Mike and Leo were already experimentin’ with tatts at the time. I wanted to try somethin’ different.”

“What does it mean?”

Here, he paused briefly. 

“It means, uh. . . .” But Raph trailed off, hesitation in his voice as he attempted to think of his response.

April fought not to smile, interpreting his reluctance as embarrassment.

“You don’t know what it means?” she asked. 

“I _know_ what it means,” he snapped, then reigned himself back in and ran a hand over the top of his head like it would sweep away his temper. Raph mumbled quieter, “It means ‘anger’ . . .”

“Edgy,” she grinned.

Raph glowered and crossed his arms, pointedly not looking at her.

“Sounded cool at the time,” he muttered crossly.

“It still is. I like tattoos and body art like that. It’s neat seeing what people are passionate enough about to get etched into their skin.” She laughed a little as she added, “Makes me wish I could afford more right now, but all I have is three.”

“Yeah, well, Mike an’ Leo are the artists ‘round here. I’m sure they’d be happy to hook you up with somethin’ if you—wait, _three_?”

April stiffened when she realized her error.

“ _These._ I said all I have is _these_ ,” she corrected.

“No. You definitely said ‘three.’” He clearly was not buying it, instead grinning broadly that he’d caught her with a secret, and suddenly April was just happy they’d moved far enough away from the others that no one else was overhearing this. “C’mon. You’re actin’ like you got a secret here, Ace.”

“I am. _Not._ Sharing. That one, Raph,” April stated firmly.

“Is it edgy?”

“No.”

“Is it stupid?”

_“No.”_

“Is it _embarrassing_?”

April threw her hands out just to quiet him down, looking warily around for any sign of his brothers or father. 

“It’s _not_ —it’s just a word,” she insisted.

“What word?” God, he was way too pleased about pushing her buttons sometimes.

_“Amoré.”_

“What’s that mean?”

“’Love.’ Like, ‘passionate love.’”

He tipped his head one way and furrowed his brow. “Hang on, howzat embarrassing? Sounds cute as hell.”

“I never said I didn’t like it.”

“Then why are you so embarrassed about it? Can I see it?”

April couldn’t believe he wasn’t taking the hint. Especially when her face had to be blazing eighty-nine different shades of bright, candy-apple red right then. 

“I can’t. Show you. _That,_ ” she gritted through her teeth.

But Raphael stayed perturbed, clearly not understanding. And some mischievous seed in her did, actually, kind of want him to know. Because knowing of its existence was one thing. Knowing its context was something entirely different.

April glanced behind them, again ensuring that the coast was still clear. Sinking further into her seat, she kicked her leg up so her heel rested on the edge of the counter—Splinter would have a fit if he knew she did that—and the way they sat with him facing her, Raph had the front row seat as she glided her other leg outward, opening her legs, and placed her hand on the top of her raised thigh. Two fingers tapped her thigh through her jeans, the top of the leg, then another two taps closer to the inside, then another two taps even closer. She watched his eyes, ensuring that he was seeing, that he was _getting her meaning_.

Raphael watched her hand move, expression entirely focused; another two taps, even further in. He broke his gaze to look at her face, color creeping into his cheeks like he was asking permission to keep going. She nodded subtly, and when he did her hand was nearly at the juncture. The smooth swell of her thigh was impossible to ignore now that he was staring right at it; the curve of lean, round muscle with blue jeans practically painted on, and he knew he could wrap almost his entire hand around it and _squeeze_.

Half an inch from the center, where her inner thigh met with places unknown and, to his knowledge, entirely sacred, April tapped with a single finger as her mark.

 _“Oh,”_ Raph said, a little breathless.

“Oh indeed.”

He tore his gaze away to meet hers; April looked positively impish, a shine in her eyes as she smirked at him.

“Am I, uh . . . am I ever gonna get to, y’know, see that?” he asked, putting that smirk right back at her. The display had left him a shade lightheaded from what he’d just seen—and imagined.

“Play your cards right, Big Red, and you might just discover a couple more secrets about me.”

“You two are _not_ as quiet as you think,” Donnie said nonchalantly from his workstation behind the corner.


	7. Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaahhhhhhh buncha SAPS these two! IRL life goal: get/give cavities from overt levels of cuteness. Fight me.

Eighty-one. . . .

Eighty-two. . . .

Eighty-three. . . .

Eighty—

A shadow crossed his light; Raph paused on the up to see who it was. April crouched beside him and folded her arms over her knees. She tilted her head, eyes tinted by a sweetly sinister glint. He recognized plotting when he saw it, but Raph kept that to himself and resumed his rhythm.

“Where’s the count at?” April asked jokingly. She must have been watching him for a good while to feel it was necessary to tease him. As highly as Raph thought of his pre-workout routine, he wasn’t sure if it was the type of thing April might be interested in.

“Eighty-nine,” he said, only a little strain from the effort creeping into his voice. He was well below the point of actual difficulty. 

Her eyebrows shot up and she whistled, impressed. “Damn. What’s your max?”

“Two-forty-eight.” 

“Holy— _wow_. I think I can do maybe twelve? Jesus, Superman.”

He smirked. “Why? You lookin’ to make some gains, Ace?” Ninety-three. . . .

She smiled, a pinkish color creeping into her cheeks. That happened more often ever since he started calling her that.

“Maybe not today, but who knows, it could be in my future,” she said. Suddenly the thought of his girlfriend sweaty in a tank top and yoga pants was _incredibly_ appealing.

“Well, when you do, lemme know and I’ll get you started,” he offered. 

One-hundred.

One-oh-one. . . .

One-oh-two. . . .

One-oh—

“Am I distracting you, Raph?”

“Nope.”

He heard her shuffling around next to him but didn’t stop his stride to check. Not until her head slid into view on the ground beneath him, black hair splayed out in a thousand directions on the weight room floor. He paused and cocked an eyebrow down at her. Her face was positively riddled with mischief. 

“How about now?” she asked impishly. 

No one had any right to be that cute, he thought and grinned back.

“Not a chance,” he said. 

“Good. I’ll help you keep count, then.”

On his next down, April tipped her head up and stole a kiss from his mouth. Her nose bumped his chin, and Raphael’s nostrils flooded with the smell of her. Like peaches and a sunset. He hummed appreciatively against her lips.

“One-oh-six,” he said aloud. Up and then down, and he kissed her again. “One-oh-seven.” Up, down, and April giggled into his lips.

“I think you should— _mmh_ —go for a new record.”

“I like how you think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to [Agehron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agehron/pseuds/Agehron) for the nickname "Ace" for April. I think it's super cute and something I can hella see Raph adopting for her since "Angelcakes" is more Mikey's thing <3


	8. Green Thumb

April had intended to call in a work order about the water heater not working, but while ranting to Donnie about how there was no way anyone would get to it on a Sunday, he had insisted on coming over to look at it himself. It wasn’t necessary, and surely he had better things to do with his weekend than be her personal handyman, but between the argumentative brawl coming through the background and the abrupt shout of a firm _“hashi, both of you, now!”_ , Donnie flatly insisted that, no, he did not have anything better to do, and he would be there in twenty.

So, here he was, hunched shoulder-deep under a section of countertop and struggling to work in the tiny space occupied by her water heater. His legs were stretched all the way across the linoleum floor with his feet anchored to the baseboard beneath the kitchen cabinetry. 

April frowned, as much in sympathy for her oversized friend as for the plant she occupied her time with. She touched one end of a sad, browning leaf and the end broke with a dry snap.

_So much for unkillable,_ she thought glumly. Snake plants were supposed to be hardy, yet she’d managed to outright murder this one.

A sharp hiss spluttered behind her and she jumped. A green hand waved over the edge of the counter as if to dismiss the sound.

“Don’t worry about that, I got this,” Don exclaimed over the ruckus of hissing steam and his squeaking wrench.

“Do you, uh, need any help, Donnie?” April asked, doing her best not to seem as worried as she was. 

“Actually, if you wouldn’t mind handing me a— _urk!_ —5/8th? If I can just get this part to sit back in its coupling, I should be able to reroute the—”

His words trailed off into grunts and rambling, incoherent technical jargon. April came over to his tool kit and combed through the mismatch of pieces, parts, and worn tools likely retrieved from storm drains and department store dumpsters over the years. She found the 5/8th clearly labeled via a strip of masking tape on its smooth red pommel and placed it in his outstretched hand. 

Something squeaked twice, and his hand reappeared, fumbling until it located a tiny tub of purple PVC cement. The beam of his headlamp shown around as Don inspected his work, flicked the new coupling with a satisfied “uh-huh,” and backed out while wiping purple-black residue from his hands onto a rag already stained with similar smears. He sat up and clicked off his headlight.

“Okay, fire it up,” he said eagerly and hopped to his feet.

April flicked a switch in the breaker box, and the water heater came to life with a deep hum. A high pitch whistle started for a brief second, but mercifully it stopped and the hum deadened too so that once the cabinet doors were shut she could barely hear it. Already an enormous improvement from before. 

Don nodded sagely.

“Give it some time to build up heat; I want to make sure it’s working before I go,” he said.

“You’re a miracle worker, Donnie,” April smiled.

He beamed and rubbed the back of his neck shyly, color creeping beneath the edge of his purple headband.

“Anything to take a break from the madness at the lair today,” he replied.

“What exactly was going on back there? I’m pretty sure I overheard someone getting sent to the _hashi_.”

Don shrugged. “Heck if I know. When Raph and Leo get into it, it’s best just to keep out of their way.” Then he muttered as if on a separate note, “Makes me wish I was an only child sometimes.”

“Yeah, but then you’d wish it wasn’t so quiet all the time,” April said sympathetically. “It was just me and my mom for so long, I would’ve given the world to have even one noisy sibling to fill the void.”

He considered that for a moment, and April watched his expression change back to a smile. 

“Yeah. I guess you’re right. As nuts as they are, I can’t picture things being any better without them,” Donnie agreed.

The oven dinged right then. Pizza’s done!

* * *

“You don’t have to fix _everything_ of mine, you know,” April told Don, amusedly watching him fret over the pitiful remains of her snake plant with half a pizza crust hanging out of his mouth.

Donnie glanced up, blinked, eyes the size of dinnerplates behind two layers of magnification lens. He stuffed the rest of the crust down with his wrist and finished chewing before speaking.

“Master Splinter says we should always be ready to offer aid to anyone in need. Person or animal—or plant, in this case,” he replied simply, returning focus to the conundrum at hand.

April laughed lightly, because of course Master Splinter would encourage that.

“Plus, it’s not actually dead.”

“It’s not?” She blinked. Could have fooled her.

“I mean, it’s _nearly_ dead. If that was your goal, you were on the right track.”

“Thanks. So much. Because me and my black thumb do _so_ enjoy cultivating dead things,” she deadpanned. 

Don inserted a probe from a slot in his wrist console into the soil. A holo screen popped up with a loading bar, then a pie chart in multiple colors and percentages. His eyes darted over it, reading it all before she could recognize more than a few key phrases like ‘phosphates’ and ‘acidic.’ The holo flickered and vanished.

“Do you have newspaper and some leftover potting soil?” Don asked.

She did, and April brought him both and laid everything out on the coffee table. With some careful tugging, Don pulled the soil free of the pot and ruffled his fingers in the bottom of the roots until the ends were just barely exposed. Dirt crumbs scattered across the newspaper, and April chagrined knowing she would need to vacuum later. 

Don hummed while inspecting the roots. Some parts were lighter than others, and he just used his fingertips to nip off the darker parts. 

“What do you water it with?” he asked. 

“Tap water.”

“What vessel do you use?”

April cocked her head. “A cup?”

More humming, and he said, “You may be oversaturating it, then. You’ve got the right type of soil, but the pot is nonporous, so the roots are struggling with the amount of moisture being held in. Do you have a different type of pot? Like clay or terra-cotta?”

“Actually, I do.” 

She still had a spare terra-cotta pot, but she’d been waiting until her next garbage run to get rid of it; the peace lily that it came with had croaked weeks ago, not that she was about to confess that aloud. April took the paper scraps out from inside (she’d been using it as a temporary wastebasket) and handed it over. Donatello went through the process of partially filling the pot and guiding the plant into its new home, filling in gaps and gingerly patting down the edges until it was stable.

“There. When you water it, just spray it with water from a spray bottle. Moisten the leaves rather than saturate the roots that way they don’t get waterlogged. Snake plants are from a more arid climate, and you only need to really water it when the top inch of soil is completely dry.” 

“Figures. I knew I could find a way to kill a cactus,” April muttered with her arms crossed.

Donnie laughed, and so did she.

“You’re a master of many talents, Don,” April stated. Simple and easy, like it was a well-recognized fact.

Donnie grinned sheepishly and looked down. He wanted to do something with his hands then, but they were still covered in soil so he resisted the urge. He wasn’t used to heartfelt compliments; at least, not from a girl. Or such a pretty and kind one. 

“A Jack of Many Trades, perhaps, but I wouldn’t call myself a master by any means,” he deflected humbly.

“Nonsense. Give yourself some credit.” She gave his arm a friendly shove. “Just look at everything you’ve built. All your tech and tools—you built Mikey a rocket-powered skateboard based of schematics he doodled on a napkin! You’ve built hologram projections from _scratch_ that are decades beyond anything I’ve ever seen, and that armored truck you’re designing—”

_“Tartaruga.”_

“—is the most incredible feat of engineering I will probably ever see in my life. You are _amazing_ , Donatello.”

Don was well and truly blushing by then, and he could not stop smiling.

“Tha-thank you, April. That . . . means a lot to me,” he stammered.

April glowed, and Don rubbed the back of his neck absently. He jerked his hand as soil crumbled down the grooves of his shell, and April snorted and giggled.


	9. Ache

She wanted to die. Curl up in a hole somewhere dark and just. Fucking. Die. Or at the very least rip her insides out and stuff them down the garbage disposal because that was exactly how it felt to have them right now.

“Is it, uh, is it always this bad?” Raph asked tentatively from the kitchen, apparently doing his best not to close cabinets too loudly. She appreciated his discretion.

April just groaned, not even sure how to respond. She didn’t normally get headaches on her period, but this one seemed determined to make up for lost time.

“No. Some are just worse than others,” she muttered. 

The lights were absolute murder; even the TV had to be muted while she laid on the couch with a blanket over her eyes and waited for the sweet release of death—or the Advil, whichever came first.

Shuffling feet announced Raphael’s approach; it was his way of not sneaking up on her accidentally, since sneaking came so naturally to him. She heard a click as something was set on the coffee table and peeked out of the blanket to investigate. On the table sat a heaping bowl of Rocky Road ice cream piled high with sprinkles and a veritable ocean of chocolate syrup. She could have cried right then. Scratch that, she was crying. Goddamn hormones.

* * *

Raph took a seat beside her as she ate. The TV volume was turned up as soon as she could bear the sound. The thunder in her head was finally dulled to a manageable throb, and with that April let her breath out in a cavernous sigh. Relieved, she curled her legs up on the spot beside her and lounged out on his lap.

The hulking turtle stiffened in surprise, but once April was settled Raph placed his hand carefully on her upper arm and relaxed into the back of the couch.

“You good?” he asked.

April hummed in the affirmative and closed her eyes. The cartoon that was on droned idly, but April gave it no attention. His slow, absent rubbing on her arm was far more engrossing, and the longer it went on the drowsier and more relaxed she became. Enough that when his other hand began to play with her hair she thought she might melt right through to the floor.

“F’you need anythin’ else, just lemme know,” Raph murmured quietly.

_Like there’s anything I could want more than this,_ April thought contentedly.

“I’m good,” she whispered with a smile. “You’re enough for me.”

She felt him breathe deep, and through his muscular leg heard his low, thrumming churr.


	10. Perennial

_“—Which reminds me—have you got any plans for next Thursday?”_ Donnie asked, diverting conversation from Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider. 

April wasn’t entirely sure how those two topics correlated, but she checked her calendar anyway. Her work schedule had changed recently, and she was still getting used to the new rhythm.

“I’ve got it off—so nothing besides sleep in and maybe go grocery shopping.” She switched her phone to the opposite ear and swore she heard a stifled ‘yes!’ in the background. “Am I on speaker phone?”

_“Uhhh . . . no?”_

“Donnie.”

The line rustled and she swore there was a change in sounds. She’d definitely just come off speaker. 

_“Aaaanyways! The reason I ask is: next Thursday marks a year since we met you, so we were—well, we wanted to know if you might hang out with us on that day? You know, to celebrate.”_

April darted back to the calendar. Was it really? Had it already been a year? It was; she couldn’t believe it! And she could have missed it!

“Of course, anything particular you guys had in mind?” she beamed.

Donnie ‘uhh-ed’ on the other line.

 _“Star Wars marathon?”_ he asked.

Someone spoke up in the background and sounded remarkably protest-like.

“I’m game. Tell you what, I’ll bring drinks if you guys handle the food. I know some games we can play,” April offered.

 _“Sure! What kinds of drinks?”_ Donatello inquired.

“How’s beer sound?”

There was a lengthy pause. Total silence, not even breathing. April checked to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.

“You just muted me, didn’t you.”

The line came back with a cacophony of Mikey shouting, _“—ooooo we gon’ party with April! Yeeessss!”_

 _“Mikey, get—! Hang on, April, let me—”_ the line cut out again.

This time April waited by the phone with a grin, picturing the chaos on the other side. It took a bit longer than expected for the sound to return.

 _“Beer is good! Uhm, Master Splinter has some conditions, however,”_ Donnie stated.

“Of course. Anything.”

_“No hard liquor—”_

Dang it. 

_“—and he kindly requests a bottle of sakē.”_

April smiled. “Absolutely.”

* * *

They’d all drank before—not much, just enough to get buzzed and find out what it was like—but according to Donnie they had never really partied. Nothing substantial, at least, as Master Splinter ran a tight ship, and their teenage rebellions only went so far. April thought it was a shame; Michelangelo drunk was probably a great time, and she was used to the kind of mix where friends, food, and alcohol together devolved into late-night debauch fests of laughter and inappropriate drinking games.

Getting Splinter’s approval was unexpected, but something told her he might not have agreed so readily if he just ow extensive her background with partying was. 

Thursday came, and April packed her bag and met Raph at the manhole in the alley. She hopped off the last ladder rung in the dark of the storm drain and right away met him for a kiss. He wrapped his arms around her, and April was more than happy to stand there in the dark and enjoy the sheer bulk of him.

They broke smiling at one another. 

“I can’t believe it’s been a year since you guys made my life implode,” April said.

“In the best way.”

“Totally.”

They kissed again, and Raph hummed approvingly. They started walking, moving down the tunnel and occasionally having to dodge dense clusters of pipes or bits of debris fallen down into the sewers from the streets above.

“Got anything for me in that bag o’ tricks?” Raph asked, eyeing her overburdened backpack.

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Aww, no spoilers?” He feigned disappointment.

“You’ll see once we get to the lair.”

“Good, ‘cause Mikey‘s been hoverin’ nonstop over that stash you brought the other day. If he knew how to invent x-ray goggles, he’d probably’a done it just to get a peek.”

April laughed at the mental image. Mikey trying to peek under the cover only to be shooed away by one of his brothers to preserve the surprise. Then, in the face of being thwarted, pleading with Don to look harder into the technology behind x-ray vision. She could practically hear the conversation in her head. 

“He must be terrible around the holidays.”

“He is,” Raph chuckled.

They walked side by side through the tunnels, her eyes taking time to adjust in the dark and more than once having to use Raph’s silhouette as a guide. She reached out and found his hand, wrapping her own around his large fingers. Raph immediately intwined his fingers with hers, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“You know, this also makes it three months for us,” April said. 

“Already?” Raphael blinked, surprised.

“Time flies when you have fun.”

“Yeah.”

Raph smiled more fully; it didn’t feel like that much time had passed. He ducked under a low hanging pipe, his expression going somewhere else. 

“What are you thinking about?” April asked, noticing the change.

“Just . . . how crazy it is. You an’ me. That we’re a thing.”

“What part is so hard to believe?”

“Not sure. All of it? That it’s us. You: April O’Neil, high-profile New York reporter extraordinaire, the girl who took down Sacks. An’ me: Raph the mutant freakin’ turtle.”

April squeezed his hand, and Raphael squeezed back.

“Life’s crazy, huh?” April simpered.

“Yeah. How come you picked me?”

“You’ve asked me that before, Raph.”

“I know, but . . . how come? You coulda’ had anybody in the city! You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re funny and determined, you’re a go-getter—is that the right word? Everyone in New York City knows who you are. I bet guys throw themselves at your friggin’ feet. You could have anybody—hell, that camera guy o’ yours practically worships you.”

“If Vernon Fenwick were the last man on Earth, I would date a frog. Like, an actual bullfrog. Failing that, I’d go full celibate.”

Raphael snorted.

“You could have anyone you want, but you wanted me,” he said.

The way he phrased it, April couldn’t quite tell if it was meant as a question or not. She chose to believe it wasn’t. That he still believed her when she said he drove her crazy in the best ways. 

April stopped walking and pulled his hand to a stop.

“Hey. Come here,” she said gently.

He did, and Raph leaned down as she reached up and framed his head in either of her hands, fingers bunching in the soft fabric of his bandana. His eyelids fluttered when he leaned into her palms, his hands gingerly wrapping themselves around her forearms, and April gave him a soft, affectionate look. 

“I don’t want anyone else. Just you,” she murmured. “You don’t doubt that, do you?”

“I . . . sometimes ‘s hard to believe.”

“Well, you better believe it. Because I don’t do anything half-assed, and when I commit myself to someone I give them all of me. The whole package. Not just the pretty looks and the snarky attitude.” Raph grinned. She passed her thumb over his cheek, grazing the lower edge of his mask and all but losing herself in those big gold eyes. “I want _you_ , Raph. Not anyone else. You. And everything that comes attached.”

“Just me,” he repeated, as if in awe of the words.

“The whole package.” 

April leaned up and touched her forehead into his. Raph reciprocated with a firmer press and exhaled through his nose. 

“I feel like the luckiest guy in this city,” Raph murmured. 

“I know the feeling.” She kissed him on the nose.

He kissed her then. Soft and sweet, and it stole her breath away.

* * *

Raph slid to the bottom of the ladder in half a second. He made that look so easy. Meanwhile, April shook her head, chose life, and took the ladder one rung at a time.

“Y’know, it’d be faster if I just carried you,” Raph offered.

“I’ll keep my dignity, thank you very much,” April replied. Once at the final rung, she hopped off causing the bottles in her bag the rattle. “Besides, this gives us time to talk.”

“Talk?”

“Yeah. Won’t get to do much of that once we’re shitfaced.”

“What do you even have in there anyway?” Raph gestured at her bag as they resumed walking. The tunnels were less familiar to her this far in, but Raph walked with the same confidence she did above ground.

“A case of beer, couple bottles of wine, and Splinter’s sakē,” she answered.

“Anythin’ good?”

“Everything I pick is good; I made sure to get as close to your requests as I could. Some orders were . . . harder to fill than others. I couldn’t really find anything cake flavored that didn’t make me want to vomit.”

Raph grimaced. “Cake flavored beer don’t sound right.”

“Cake _vodka_ is pretty good, but I haven’t been brave enough to try cake beer.”

“Yeah?”

“Most of the parties I go to tend to get fuzzy around the time Pinnacle Whipped vodka makes it out on the table.”

“Is that good?” Raph quirked an eyebrow.

“It means the party was pretty rockin’. Plus, it’s one of my favorites; mix it with strawberries and cream and it makes a drink called _Cloud 9_ , so hell yeah it is. Honestly, I kind of thought Mikey would’ve requested something pizza flavored.”

“I’d vote him off this island if he did,” Raph said completely deadpan. 

April laughed.

* * *

“You look like you wanna say something,” April said. 

Raph snapped out of his half trance. April was recognizing some landmarks along the path—a peculiarly shaped crack after a right turn, some ancient graffiti, a ladder rung with orange numbers painted beside it—and knew they were getting close.

“’S fine,” Raph said to her dissatisfaction. 

“Your expression suggests otherwise.”

“Eh, it’s kinda dumb,” Raph admitted, raising one hand to the back of his neck. The gesture was something all the brothers did when flustered or unsure, she noticed, but Leo did it most often. She wondered if they picked it up from each other or maybe TV; she couldn’t fathom them picking it up from Splinter.

“What makes you say that?” April asked. 

Raph lacking in confidence was not a common sight, so she knew this had importance to him. 

“Because it’s . . . it just probably is.”

“You can tell me anything, Raph. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know.”

But he stayed quiet, and April almost felt guilty over how nosey she wanted to be. 

“Is it bad?” she asked. 

“What—no! It just . . . ain’t my area o’ expertise.”

“But it’s . . . mine?” 

He frowned. Not at her exactly, more at the situation.

“It’s. . . .” Raph trailed off and sighed as he gave up trying to find better words. “You said it’s our three months, too. Is three months significant? Like, in a relationship. I mean—I kinda figured one month and maybe six months’d be important, but I didn’t know three months was.”

“Well, it’s . . . it kind of is? Not in a huge way, but it’s usually a turning point in a lot of relationships. If a relationship is going to fail it usually does at about the three month mark. At least in my experience.”

Raph looked surprised. “How come?”

“That’s usually about how long it takes to become complacent with a partner. If a relationship is built on a lie—like if you’re pretending to be someone you’re not to make the other person like you—that’s usually about where the facade starts to break down. Same with crazy. If crazy is going to rear its head, it’s usually around then.”

Raph gave her a look, and his mouth curled at its corners.

“You ain’t gonna go nuts-oh on me, are ya, Ace?” he asked. 

April grinned. “I faced off with The Shredder unarmed. You haven’t begun to witness my level of crazy, Red.”

Raph laughed heartfully.

* * *

“Hey, guys! Fun’s here,” Raph bellowed as they came around the lair’s false entry.

Boisterous shouts echoed back from around the lair and from the kitchen. She could already see a tower of pizza boxes stacked on the counter by the entertainment system, liters of soda, mounds of chips, bowls of various dips, and other snacks piled alongside. Yeah, she was definitely having college flashbacks, as well as _Epic Meal Time_ vibes. She set her bag on a chair and started unloading her backpack: some cheap bottles of wine, a six-pack of beer she’d never tried before, and Splinter’s promised bottle of sakē.

The brothers practically materialized around her. Donnie had stars in his eyes over the six pack of _Purple Haze_ lager. Mikey gleefully helped her retrieve her stash, the selection of which included a few variety packs from _Shock Top_ , _Mike’s Hard_ , _Blue Moon_ , and _Dos Equis_ , and a few more inexpensive bottles of wine more for herself. Even Splinter came over to investigate as the guys filtered through the bottles and investigated labels.

“Yo, you don’t mess around when it comes to parties, huh?” Mikey said, skimming the label of a three-dollar bottle of white zinfandel and mouthing the words ‘light-bodied.’

“You’re damn right. I figured you guys might have a high tolerance, so I did a lot of guess work on the selection. Now, that doesn’t mean all of this is meant to be drank _tonight_. Feel free to save some for later,” April said, stealing a bottle of _Purple Haze_ as she spoke to make sure she got to try some.

“Might be tough. This stuff looks pretty good,” Leo commented.

The brothers looked to Splinter, then, who nodded over the collection of cans, bottles, and boxes, bags, and bowls of food. He seemed to consider something, then smiled. 

“Looks like you have an eventful night ahead of you,” the aged rat said with mischief in his tone.

The brothers grinned hopefully.

April took the bottle of sakē, an amber bottle of _Kirinzan_ with a black label, and offered it to Splinter with both hands.

“Thank you for letting us do this, Master Splinter,” April said gratefully. 

Splinter smiled and accepted the bottle with a nod. 

“How long do you intend to be awake for?” he asked his sons. 

The brothers glanced among themselves.

“How long may we be awake for, sensei?” Leo posed the question back.

Splinter considered, stroking his whiskers as he did. 

“It is a unique occasion, I suppose. One well worth celebrating. You may have the night.”

Leo and Raph bumped arms, Donnie grinned, and Mikey pumped his arms and shared a high-five with April. 

“Thank you, Master Splinter,” April said. 

“Thank you, sensei,” all four brothers repeated and bowed. 

With that, Splinter departed to his room with his bottle of sakē in hand. The instant he was gone, Mikey scooped April up around the waist and spun her in a circle as she giggle-squeaked in surprise.

“You are the freakin’ coolest, Crazy Apes,” Mikey gleamed.

“You’re welcome!”

He set her down, and in a minute everyone had a bottle picked out for themselves. They twisted their caps off and April popped hers with a keychain bottle opener. 

“To family?” Leo started, raising his bottle.

“To friends,” Don added. 

“To new experiences,” Raph said, looking at April with a smirk. She bumped her hip on his thigh. 

“To cheese,” Mikey grinned at the pair, and Donnie gave him a good-natured elbow. 

“And the most amazing roller coaster I’ve ever been on,” April contributed. 

They each offered their own agreements, and they knocked their bottles together in a resounding toast to that.

* * *

Sounds from _A New Hope_ played in the background, its musical score only added to the soundtrack of their shenanigans.

The guys were still working out their teams, but April was not about to sit things out when she was feeling this good. While Don argued strategies, April slung her arm over Mikey’s shoulders and drew the youngest turtle in at her side while squaring off with Leonardo, pointing a finger at the eldest brother in challenge.

“Nuh-uh—Mikey’s on my team and I’m not sharing him,” she argued confidently.

Leo crossed his arms and gave a side-eye to his own partner in crime; Raphael smirked broadly.

“You two think you can take us on, huh?” Raph stepped forward. It was tough not to be intimidated when he squared up, but it made April want to meet his challenge all the more.

“Bro, we gotchu two in the bag! You can’t touch this,” Mikey exclaimed, throwing his arm around April in turn and pounding his chest with the other. “Watchu got? You got nuthin!”

“I hear lots of talk, but I don’t see you throwing any hands,” Leo defied.

“Red and Blue don’t stand a chance,” April said.

“Orange and Yellow gon’ beat a fellow,” Mikey confirmed.

She and Mikey bumped fists, and Leo and Raph exchanged smirks. Everyone looked at Donnie. The middle brother put his hands up in preemptive surrender.

“Don’t look at me, I’m just the ref,” he deflected.

April and Mikey were the first to the foosball table, and Leo and Raph shouldered their way opposite.

* * *

The ball sailed through the air and dropped solid into the final cup with a splash.

“Aww, _no_!” Leo and Don exclaimed in unison.

Leo covered his face as he and Donnie crumpled in defeat at the same time Raph and Mikey whooped and high-fived each other. April laughed, and Leo downed his last cup.

“Switch it up!” Mikey cheered. “April, you with me, babe?”

A tempting notion. They had dominated the first few rounds of foosball until Donnie figured the workaround to Mikey’s backspin technique, and surely if they teamed up again over beer pong the results would be legendary.

“As much as I’d love to dominate the competition, let’s make it a little more interesting,” April said.

She sidled up alongside Raphael, the big turtle grinning to have been chosen over his brothers. Michelangelo appeared marginally betrayed, but it didn’t take long for Don to team up with him in his quest for revenge. April sized up their competition and decided she liked the odds.

“We got this in the bag, Ace,” Raph stated confidently.

They bumped fists.

Both sides re-racked their cups into neat groupings of ten before refilling them. Leo sat back with a heaping plate of pizza and a cup of water to watch and eventually instigate. Everyone was feeling loose thanks to a case of _Big Brother Hard Root Beer_ they’d just cracked into. 

“It’s Turtle Twins vs. Love Birds, and the audience wants to know: who will win? Will the dashing Michelangelo, the Orange Lightning, and his stalwart sidekick, Purple Wonder, pull out all the stops and steal victory from the Red Menace and his beautiful compatriot, Yellow Anaconda?” Mikey called in his best announcer’s voice, gesturing dramatically over the table as he spoke then framed his hands around his mouth and made the noise of a crowd cheering. “’Ahhh! Mikey an’ Don, oh my gosh, you guys are so great! You totally got this! Ahhh!’”

April mouthed ‘Yellow Anaconda’ meanwhile Raphael shook his head, Don and Leo barely containing their laughter. 

“Do you wanna tell him, or should I?” April asked Raph, gesturing with the hand that held the ping-pong ball.

“Might as well show ‘em,” Raph agreed with a shrug belying his confident smirk.

Leo’s interest was peaked, and Mikey and Don shared a suspicious glance.

“Do you have something to share?” Donnie asked.

“Yeah. The ace up her sleeve,” Raph smirked.

April took her shot. The ball bounced once with a _tak_ and dropped square in the middle cup. Don went slack jawed as Mikey gaped. April smirked. Raph whooped, and Leo looked pleasantly surprised.

“Don’t forget, I was a professional college student for four years; I’m basically semi-pro at beer pong. Oh, and a bounce means two cups, and you both drink,” April gleamed.

Mike and Don shared a look, seemingly worried before simultaneously deciding “hell yeah.” Mikey took the cup with the ball, Don the one behind it, and slammed them back together before Mikey came up with the ball between his teeth, waggling his eyebrows.

* * *

“Okay, real talk. I gotta know what made you pick nunchucks. I’ve seen all the weapons in the dojo and there are so many, so, just—why nunchucks?” April asked, head propped on her arms on the back of her chair.

They seemed like an odd weapon to her, but then she had little martial arts experience beyond the training she’d witnessed and what she’d seen from Hollywood.

“I dunno, they just felt right, y’know?” Mike replied. He was lounged on the couch opposite her with an empty plate balanced on his forehead and a pizza slice on his chest. He pantomimed the swinging motion. “Like— _swing-swing-whack!_ Spin ‘em fast like a helicopter an’ maybe you can fly?”

April hummed. She understood completely. “Leo? What about you?”

The eldest was seated in a ragged old armchair, a damp washcloth draped over his eyes. 

“Shiny an’ sharp,” he replied sagely. No doubt short for ‘it’s a long story and I do not possess the mental faculties to go into detail right now,’ which she also understood. 

“Nice,” April said. “Raph?”

“Pointy. Bludgeon-y. Fun to throw,” he answered from the floor, still snickering at Leo.

April nodded in agreement. “What about you, Donnie?”

“Hit with stick,” Raph joked before he could respond, waving one hand in the air as if swinging a wand.

Everyone chuckled, even Don from his place at the counter.

“Gives me reach _and_ flexibility,” he said proudly.

* * *

April did not sleep well, and when she finally did wake up it was to a dry mouth, a sour stomach, and a pinching throb behind her left eye. Still, she managed to sit up despite the pain and take a tally of the room. The menu music for _Return of the Jedi_ played on a soft loop somewhere nearby. Raph and Leo were sound asleep on the floor and armchair where they fell. Don was nowhere, she assumed having gone back to his room to sleep in his own bed at some point (yep, absolute genius). Mikey was the only one she didn’t see right away, but a brief search found him awake and sitting at the table eating cold nachos.

He waved and crunched into a stale tortilla chip.

April winced.

“How can you eat right now?” she groaned.

“’M hungry.”

“Uck. Iron stomach.”

Mikey chuckled.

April made a trip to the bathroom and felt a little bit better after splashing her face and moving around, but her head still pounded. She found her bag and collected a few things before going back out into the living area. Leo was sitting up, arms slouched over his knees, and Raph had his hand on his forehead covering his eyes. She went to Mikey first and gave him a little treat: a bottle of Gatorade in his favorite color with a few tablets of headache medicine and a packet of instant coffee attached to it by a ribbon.

Mikey perked at the gift and gladly cracked into the bottle. “Ah, you beautiful, perfect creature, you. Bless.”

April patted him on the shoulder and went to Leo next, and he smiled gratefully as he took his. Then she knelt beside Raphael who frankly looked like he’d been hit by the subway.

“Hey, you gonna make it?” she asked.

“Fuck.”

“Where does it hurt?”

“’M stomach . . . my head. . . .”

She popped a couple tablets of antacids and pressed them into his hand.

“Here. You’ll live,” she said.

Raph moaned, and she kissed him on the forehead and gave him a Gatorade.

Bit by bit everyone stirred back to life. Raph made a trip to the bathroom as Leo joined Mike and April at the table to take part in a breakfast of cold pizza and other room temperature snacks. Before long, Donnie, too, emerged from the doorway of his bedroom without his glasses, gear, or suspenders. Just his mask and some oversized basketball shorts that left him looking like a skinnier, scalier Hulk.

“Mornin’,” April greeted when he sat down. 

“I feel like I got hit by a truck,” Don said, one eye squinted shut while palming the side of his head. 

His brothers made sympathetic sounds.

April slid over a bottle and tablets for him, too, and Donnie looked at her like she’d just hung the stars. Mike had already finished his, but Leo was taking a slower approach.

“You planned ahead,” Don observed as he cracked off the cap.

“To party harder, one must also party smarter,” April stated wisely.

All three hummed.

“Dude, you’re like . . . Party Buddha,” Mikey said.

April and Leo both laughed and winced.

“Anyone want their coffee? Caffeine helps with the headache,” April said. All hands raised; Leo started to stand up, but April stopped him. “I got it. You guys chill.”

Leo looked unsure, but he didn’t put up a fuss over it, either.

“Are you sure?” he asked, used to being the one to take on a caring role.

April patted him on the shoulder. “I got you, bro.”

Leo smiled gratefully and resumed laying his head on his arms.

April collected their instant coffee packets and went to the kitchen and set the kettle to boil. She took out four mismatched mugs and, while tapping out the last few grains of one pouch, a wide arm emerged from behind her and looped around her middle. She leaned readily into the bulk at her back, humming welcomingly to the contact. Raph wrapped his other arm halfway around, too, but his hand was occupied by a stiff, half-eaten slice of cold pizza.

“He lives,” April greeted, as cheery as she could manage given the dull throb in the back of her eye socket.

“G’morning,” Raph chuckled and kissed her temple.

“You want coffee, too?”

“Please.”

Raph retreated briefly to get himself a mug and his own coffee packet. It took a couple minutes for the kettle to boil, and as they waited April was happy to just stand there and enjoy his arms around her, at one point stealing a bite from his pizza when he raised it to his mouth. That earned her a halfhearted grumble. 

As soon as the kettle began to steam, she and Raphael had five piping hot cups and returned to the table with their bounty balanced between them. The brothers thanked them and April sagged into her seat as the four took part in some rather convincing zombie impressions. She could empathize. Hardcore. 

“None of you ever had a hangover before?” she asked. 

Don shook his head. “None of us have gotten drunk like that before.”

“Good thing Splinter said no liquor. It’d be so much worse if we’d had the hard stuff.”

“Wait, worse than this?” Mike asked, incredulous.

“Way worse,” April said and winced at the heat of the coffee combined with the pain flinching sent up her skull. 

She took a slice of cold pizza, too, and sat back in her chair, lifting one leg and draping it over Raph’s lap beside her. He responded by placing his hand on it, smiling at her from the corner of his eye, and petting up and down her shin mindlessly.

“Worth it, though?” she asked the table.

“Hell yeah.”

“Oh yeah.

“Totally.”

“Party here anytime, girl.”

April laughed a little and sipped her coffee. 

Splinter emerged from his room not long after that. Don and Leo sat straighter whereas Mikey seemed oblivious, nursing his Gatorade and a three-high stack of pizza slices. Leo gave him a whack on the arm, and only then did he sit up straight with a mouth still full of food. Raph merely turned his head without taking his hand off her leg. 

“Good morning, sensei,” the brothers all greeted. 

“Good morning, my sons. Good morning, April.”

April smiled. “Good morning, Master Splinter.”

Splinter passed into the kitchen and retrieved the kettle off the cooling rack, filtering through cupboards until he located his tea.

“Did you enjoy yourselves last night?” he asked.

“A blast,” Donnie said. 

“Except I think I know how it feels to drink gasoline,” Mikey groaned.

Leo seemed to go a little extra green at the mention.

“Maybe keep away from cinnamon whiskey, then, Mike,” April said.

The guys all moaned in displeasure. Splinter laughed lightly.

“I am glad to hear it,” Splinter said.

“We didn’t disturb you, did we, sensei?” Leo asked.

“Not at all, Leonardo. I hope your stomachs will not hold you back during today’s training.”

The silence that went over the table was deafening. April could practically feel the cloud of dread as horrified glances turned to Leonardo. Donnie mouthed ‘please no’ to his oldest brother, Raph was rigid, and all the blood seemed to have drained from Mikey’s expression. Leo looked torn. It was clear he was the only one with a modicum of authority to say anything on the matter. April honestly felt bad watching the exchange.

“It will not, sensei,” Leo ultimately replied.

Everyone groaned in unison; Mikey threw his arms up as he fell back in his seat, Don hid his face, and Raph put his head back and moaned so loud it was almost a yell. The complaints went all around the table, but Splinter had no response as he fixed himself breakfast. Leo looked resigned to the fate before him.

April was sympathetic but truly did not envy what they were surely in for. 

“Sorry, guys,” she said, hoping to offer whatever comfort she might.

“April, I do recall you said you did not have work today, is that correct?” Splinter asked, reappearing at the edge of the kitchen, teacup in hand.

April froze. Four pairs of eyes zeroed in on her, and suddenly April remembered what stage fright was like.

“I . . . did say that,” she muttered haltingly.

“Would you care to join us in the dojo today?”

Splinter’s smile was genial and polite, cradling his cup of hot tea in his thin hands. He knew. Had to. Training today was as good as a death sentence, and, she realized, this was probably his way of making sure they understood the consequences. A hangover did not exempt them from the day. Not his sons, and, apparently, not April, either. 

She wanted to say no. She did not want to spend the morning puking in the dojo—which she was absolutely certain would be the outcome—and April did not think _they_ wanted to spend their morning watching her puke in the dojo.

“Are you . . . sure? I think I’d just slow down the lesson,” she offered meekly. It was all the protest she could muster when faced with the rat’s brand of dangerous courtesy. 

“Nonsense. I am sure my sons would appreciate your company.”

The guys were still looking at her. Eyebrows were raised. A couple ominous smiles formed on the faces of Mike and Don, Leo appeared pitying, and Raph was split between wanting to grin at the novelty of the situation and feeling sorry for her, too.

Ultimately, April resigned herself to her fate just as Leo had.

“It would be an honor to join you, Master Splinter,” she replied.

Splinter smiled, nodded, and returned to the kitchen. April dropped her head on the table, and Raph patted her shoulders pityingly.


	11. Where You Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a direct follow-up to "Perennial."

April flopped onto Raph’s futon feeling only a little guilty that her damp hair might transfer onto the bedding. Her limbs felt the consistency of al dente noodles. How she had strength enough to shower after spending so much of the day in the dojo was beyond her—and to have spent half of it with a pounding hangover to boot. Her only consolation was that she was not the only one who threw up today: Mikey managed his backflips just fine; his stomach, however, did not.

April had almost called it quits near the start, but something in her brain wanted to make Splinter proud more than it wanted to lie down and die. Even through the pain of knowing she would be paying for it the rest of the week, she wanted to do it for Splinter.

Once all was done and Splinter dismissed them, she’d persuaded the brothers to let her take the first shower. It didn’t take much convincing, and once she’d returned from Raphael’s room with her change of clothes it was to find the four of them cleaning up the mess from the night before. Her guilt spiked seeing that; it didn’t feel right to leave all the work to them when it was her mess, too. 

She walked over, and Raph paused sweeping bits of chips into a dustpan to look up. He seemed far less phased by the day than she did. Somehow, he’d managed to escape the worst of the hangover symptoms. 

“Need any help?” she’d asked.

“Nah, we got this,” he assured her.

“You sure?”

“A little cleanup never hurt ‘nybody. Go get your shower before Mikey sneaks in ahead of ya.”

April smiled; Mikey was deconstructing pizza boxes and doing his best to shove them into an already very overfull trashcan. Raph dumped his dustpan, and as he did April sidled up on him. Close enough to bump his belt buckles with her stomach and place one hand on his side. His gave her a ‘what are you up to?’ kind of smile only for April to hook her thumb under his waistband and give it a tug. 

“You wanna’ join me?” she’d asked, a pointed little grin playing on her lips.

Color lit up his face beneath his bandana. She meant to say it quietly, but ninja ears were tough to be discreet around, apparently, as a round of teasing “ooh’s” sounded from behind him. Raph silenced his brothers with a glare; Mikey and Leo still snickered as Donnie grinned.

“Maybe another time,” Raph said, but he looked like maybe he wanted to say something different.

So, April had gone to shower alone secretly hoping all the while that Raphael might sneak in to join her, but he never did.

She sprawled out on his futon and dragged his pillow over. It was flat and a little lumpy, its once vibrant pattern barely clinging to its more recognizable shapes. It smelled like him. The whole bed did. She curled around it and breathed him in. The sheets were cool against her skin, and she rolled her legs around until the sheets were tangled in her sweatpants. 

The door clicked and April stilled, eyes shut pretending to be asleep. The door opened, shut. An moment of stillness, silence, of observation, then feet quietly moved across the floor and past her. She smiled, listening as he went to the closet. The doors opened, and she picked her head up to sneak a peek, but his outline disappeared behind the door. Some rustling, then a towel fell in a heap on the floor. She blushed just thinking about him naked and this close. So close but out of reach, April thought tragically.

Raph appeared a moment later tying off the waistband to his basketball shorts; they were apparently the favorite loungewear of the family. He hung the towel on a hook then stilled we he noticed he had an audience.

“Didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked.

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

Raph smirked and strode over. “Tryin’a catch a peek, troublemaker?”

“Maybe. You’re so modest—it’s enough to make a girl desperately curious, Raphael.”

“Psh, modesty nuthin’. Just ‘cause Mikey ain’t got any qualms about walkin’ around with no pants on don’t mean I gotta, too.” He knelt at the head of the futon and leaned on his knuckles, making April have to tip her head back. “But if you’re desperate, well, I mean. . . .” He trailed off, leaving her to interpret the direction that thought might go. 

“Oh, yes. Terribly desperate, Raph.” April smiled devilishly.

“Yeah?”

“Awfully, horribly.” She wrapped her fingers on the edge of the pillow. “I’ll just _die_ if I don’t get to see you naked.” On the last word, she swung the pillow at his head, but Raph caught it with his forearm.

“Don’t be bad,” he chastised.

“Bad is what I do best.”

“Oh, I know it is, but you’re only gonna get away with a special kinda bad around me.”

“I can be that special kind of bad.” Her voice tipped an octave lower when she spoke, tinted with honey.

Raph leaned further over here. “You sure ‘bout that, Ace?”

“Come down here and find out, hot stuff.” She curled a finger, beckoning him to her level.

Raph somersaulted onto the futon, and April rolled out of the way to avoid getting squished. She was up on her knees before he was even fully settled, planted both elbows on his chest, and pulled him into a kiss hot enough to send waves down his arms. Her hands ran down and across his chest, savoring the smooth solidity of him. The swell of his muscles, the tiny ridges in his plastron, the gaps between scales. And no wraps or armor to hide him from her hands.

April trailed one hand so that her fingernails lightly grazed the side of his neck. The flesh tightened beneath her touch, almost like goosebumps. She trailed further and traced down the column of his throat with the backs of two fingers. Raphael shuddered.

“Tell me what makes you feel good, Raph,” April said, words breathy on his lips.

“That,” he murmured eloquently.

He cupped her neck beneath her hair, tipped his head, and kissed her deeper. April’s thoughts fizzled momentarily. His tongue traced her bottom lip, and she met it eagerly.

“You like it when I kiss you?” she sighed once she had faculties again.

“Yeah.”

“I really like kissing you, Raph.”

“Good.”

He smirked against her lips. Her arms wound around his neck, curling over him like she could trap him there. He squeezed her body in his hands and pulled her more firmly into him, encouraging. April’s nerves were alive. Her muscles were sore, but her body was still wired from the day. It hurt to move, but movement was what she craved. She pushed her body down on his, hoping he would feel the urgency pressing toward him. The blood that roared in her veins and made her insides pulse.

“Is there anything _else_ you like? My mouth is good for more than just kissing, you know,” April asked between short breaks.

Raph broke to look up at her. His expression was tough to read. He looked dazed, but then April wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders herself. 

“Yeah?” he asked. 

“Yes.”

Moving slow, she descended to his throat, kissing in a line down his neck. He shivered, and April reveled as he tilted his head to give her better room. Gently mouthing a spot below his pulse, she sucked on it lightly. Raphael sighed, and April glided one hand down his chest, mapping out the pattern on his abdomen. Her fingertips reached the waistband of his shorts when his hand wrapped around her wrist, stopping her. April lifted her head.

“No?” she asked. 

Raph’s expression was suddenly unclear. Not one of refusal but not unequivocal encouragement, either. April sobered and sat up as he released her hand.

“Talk to me, Raph. Please,” she implored.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead was quiet for a moment while he struggled to find what to say.

“You know no one’s ever touched me before. Not like you do,” he began. Suddenly looking her in the eye was a lot more difficult.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No, no. I just—is it . . . okay?” He looked up at her, his eyes pleading.

“Is it . . . ? I’m going to need you to elaborate a little.” 

Raphael sat up, and April scooted back on her knees to give him some space.

“I mean is it okay for me to want you like this? It doesn’t . . . weird you out? That I’m. . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, but she knew his meaning. “All your other boyfriends’ve been regular guys, but I ain’t even human. That don’t bother you?”

“No. It doesn’t,” she said assuredly. 

“How come?”

“Because you’re—you. I don’t know how better to put it. You not being human, that doesn’t matter to me. When I think of you, I don’t think about what you are or aren’t. I just think of _you_. How good you are to me and how good you make me feel. I think about you sassing your brothers and playing video games and training and kissing me so passionately it takes my breath away. I think about your hands—” April took his hand and brought it where she could kiss the space between his knuckles; they were rough with calluses. “—and how much I like them on me. How strong they are. I think about your face—” She leaned up, and when he didn’t shy away kissed the middle of his brow. There was a hint of smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “—and that pouty look you get when Leo tells you what to do.”

_“Pouty—”_ he started to interrupt.

April silenced him with a kiss on the lips, and the heat in his throat fizzled out. Her hands glided their way to his shoulders, and his came to rest on her waist. 

“I think about your lips. . . .” She murmured, soft and slow.

“My lips. . . .” He repeated, voice gone rough and gravelly. 

“And how much I like them on mine. How I like them kissing me.”

“I can do that more of’n if you like.”

April giggled. She liked the sound of that.

“There’s a lot of newness in this relationship, I’m not going to lie about that, but that doesn’t made it a bad thing. ‘New’ and ‘different’ aren’t inherently bad things. Everyone is different from everyone else in their own way. Yes, you’re more different in a lot of ways, but that’s not a negative. When you think of everyone as an individual, the fact that someone is different means less than what those differences culminate towards. You’re not human, Raph—elephant in the room: acknowledged—and no, that does not bother me. Because it’s just one piece to the puzzle that makes: you. It contributes to the bigger picture, but take that away and there are still 999 other things that make you _you_.”

Raph was smiling by then, even offered a bemused chuff at the elephant comment, and it made her heart do a funny little dance inside her ribcage.

“Just one piece to the big ol’ Raph Puzzle,” he repeated.

“Yep. And I gotta say, I am a fan of the bigger picture. With _all_ its pieces.”

He snorted. 

“I like how your brain works, Ace,” he said. “You’re smart as hell, an’ good at cheerin’ a turtle up.”

She smiled at that. She kissed his forehead again and hugged him back when he squeezed her waist tightly.

“Thank you for telling me, Raph. I didn’t realize it bothered you,” April said.

“Not—well, I don’t know if it bothered me so much as it confused me? Like, how could a smart, funny, gorgeous, successful babe like you like a Swamp Thing like me? Just don’t make a whole lotta sense.”

April snorted.

“Let’s be real, if anyone is the Swamp Thing in this family, it’s Mikey when he doesn’t shower after training,” she said.

Raphael laughed, and there was a devastating charm to that. With a bit of pushing, Raph was on his back again and April knelt at his side.

“Anyway, you’re forgetting a very important detail about me, Raph.” He arched an eyebrow, and April pointed at herself, “Monster lover.”

His face split into a broad grin.

“Oh, yeah. How could I o’ forgotten? ‘Specially when you had me prisoner all night that first night,” he hummed.

“Hey. I seem to recall _you_ were the one who trudged all the way through a snowstorm just to have an excuse to get locked in with me. You have no one to blame but yourself for our shenanigans that night.”

“Shenanigans, yeah. Such a tragedy. It was terrible. We were stuck inside, forced to huddle together t’ keep warm. I dunno how we ever made it.”

“If by ‘huddle’ you mean ‘grind on me and fuck me through my clothes,’ then yes, that’s exactly how I remember it, too,” April gleamed.

An electrical zing of recollection went through him at the mention; she felt it happen. Their first night together played through her head often. Even if things didn’t make it past PG-13, she still remembered sitting in his lap on the couch trying to grind through his clothes like she was mining for treasure with her hips. The uncertainty behind his first kiss, then the unquenchable fire he had when he hauled her in the next morning and used his lips to make love to her mouth.

Raph looked to be remembering the good times, too.

“You came on pretty strong a few times there, Ace. Not gonna lie. You were a bit hot to handle,” he said. “Coulda thawed the city.”

“I had to make sure you knew what was on my mind, Big Red.”

It was impossible to miss the shiver than ran through him at the nickname. He glided one hand down to cup the crook of her knee.

“Remind me what you were thinkin’ that night,” Raph all but purred. A deep tone low in his chest, and a shine of heat in his amber eyes.

April swung her leg over him without pause or ceremony. His reaction was immediate, eyes wide as much with shock as mesmerism. When she took both his hands and pressed them into the futon on either side of his head, April thought he’d forgotten how to breathe with her hair hanging like a curtain on either side of them.

“I was thinking how you were the sexiest damn thing I’d ever had between my legs. Just a damn shame I couldn’t get you out of that armor and inside me, baby,” April said, lips suspended inches above his.

His eyes lit up, and that deep, thrumming rumble kicked up from low in his body. This time, when he made that noise, she _felt_ it. 

“You did get me outta my armor, though, Ace,” he murmured, unable to tear his gaze away from her. “In nuthin’ but my skivvies rollin’ under the covers with you.”

“I did. God, that was such a great night, Raph.”

He smirked.

“You said I had you wet ‘n horny. Squirmin’ and grindin’ on me like I had something you wanted, baby girl.”

A shiver lanced up her spine at the pet name, and suddenly ‘Daddy’ was tingling on the tip of her tongue. She leaned forward, pushing her hips down and rolling them back, grinding her ass on his shorts. A tense shudder clenched the muscles in his core, and Raph’s eyes fluttered. 

“You did. And you still do. You had me wet like a horny little schoolgirl, Red.”

Raphael moaned then, eyes shut as if stricken by the thought. “Schoolgirl— _fuck_.”

“You like the thought of me in a plaid skirt, baby?”

He groaned louder, and it was all the response she needed. She made a note to check out skirts the next time she went to the store. She rolled her hips forward and down, grinding the junction of her thighs on his belly. She put all of her weight into her hands and lower body and pressed her lips lightly to his temple.

“You could have me in anything you want, Big Guy. Or nothing at all. Completely naked. On top of you. Underneath you. With my legs open or ass up. Or how about my thighs around your head like earmuffs?” she murmured.

His sounds were deep and entirely animal. His arms flexed beneath her hands, strong enough he could break her hold with a twitch, but he didn’t. Kept them there. An illusion of control, or perhaps a desire for it.

“Fuck, baby girl. You make it so hard to wanna be good,” he said. His tone low in his chest. There was fire smoldering in his eyes.

“Fuck good. I want you _bad_. Be my bad boy, Daddy.”

April was on her back before she knew it. Her arms flew around his neck and clamped her legs around his waist, a high pitch keen leaving her as his body _pressed_ between her legs. Raph kissed her so hard their teeth clashed. Her breath left her in a rush. She pawed at him, fought to pull him closer. He ground his body between her thighs. Pointedly. Deliciously. His shorts rubbed against her, and she canted her hips up until her sex was rubbing on his crotch through their clothes.

His hips shuddered as he pushed into her all the more, their mouths full of each other’s tongue. He was so strong. Heavy. His weight bearing down on her in all the right places. Solid and dominant. She loved it. 

Her heartbeat pounded low, low in her belly. She was wet. Slick with want. With need. Her body all but screamed for him.

“Please . . . please, Raph. . . . I want you, baby. I need you,” she pleaded between kisses.

“I—April, I—”

He struggled to find words. Fought to keep command of his faculties while her grinding threatened to push his shorts off his hips. He wanted. He needed her. He was so hard it hurt, and here she was begging for it. If he’d worn a shirt, she’d probably have ripped it off him by now. She smelled wild. She tasted like lightning. 

He wanted her so bad, for a blinding instant he was terrified of what he might do to have her.

Raph broke off so fast it left her dazed.

“I—I can’t,” he stammered out in a rush. 

He wanted to. Badly. More than anything. But he just—he couldn’t. He was—and she was—they were—

_Too_ different. 

He couldn’t bear the thought of getting that far only to find out it wasn’t possible.

April’s head fell back on the futon as if she’d been dropped. Eyes closed to collect herself. Forced herself to temper down, to collect her breath and resituate her heart in her chest. For both their sakes.

“Okay,” she murmured after catching her breath.

“I’m sorry, Ace.”

“Don’t be, baby. It’s okay.” She reached up and stroked his cheek. “We don’t have to, but if you do want to, we can just fool around a little. Clothes on. It’s your call.”

He looked interested but unsure. “You sure? I just ruined it. . . .”

“No, you didn’t ruin anything. If you don’t want to continue, you don’t have to. You have a right to call stop, no matter what I want.”

“But you do . . . you do want to?”

“You mean do I want you?” she clarified.

He nodded.

April smiled. She ran her hand over his shoulder and leaned up on her elbow, placing a tender kiss on his chin then a second on the edge of his mouth.

“I want you like a paintbrush wants color, like a glass wants water, and like an eagle wants the sky,” she said.

He turned his head and caught her lips with his. He pressed for more, kissing her and plying until April was on her back again, arms winding around his neck. 

“I’m cool with foolin’ around a little,” Raph said.

“Hmm, my big, sexy turtle.”

He chuffed. “Psh. Troublemaker.”

“You like my trouble.”

“I do.”

He kissed her again, and with time settled his body back against hers. All but soaking up the warmth from her legs and belly. The feel of her body was incredible. Knowing she wanted him—intoxicating.

“You’re really okay with just this?” he asked.

“Well,” April started to say, “maybe kiss me a little more. And tell me I’m pretty.”

She meant it as a joke, but his immediate response of, “April, you’re fucking gorgeous,” came with such urgency she blushed.

“You’re so good to me.”

“Even if I turn down sex and ruin the mood?”

“Would I still have my legs around you if I thought the mood was ruined?” she asked, pointedly arching an eyebrow.

“Guess not. Then again. . . .” He trailed off without finishing, slid his hand to cup the back of her knee, pulled her leg up higher—wow, okay, it did not occur to him that she could be _that_ flexible—and pressed his hips between her legs. This time, he got to see her reaction. How her head fell back on the futon with hair spilled in a thousand directions beneath her. Eyes closed and bottom lip pinched between her teeth, she looked on the verge of something grand. 

“You look like this hurts, Ace. Should I stop?” Raph teased.

Before he could push anymore buttons, she grabbed him by the hips and pulled him back in. Fuck if that wasn’t the sexiest fucking move he’d ever been a part of. Her other heel dug into the underside of his shell, trapping him there, and she canted her hips up into his.

“What hurts me most is not having your big cock inside me,” April smirked.

_Holy—_

“Anyone ever tell you not to bite off more’n you can chew?” he said.

“Won’t know that until I can get my mouth on you.”

_Fuck._

Raph groaned, cock throbbing hard in his vent, and crashed his mouth onto hers before she could say anything more to sabotage him. He took her hands and pinned them on either side of her head. Her eyes fluttered, but she didn’t fight his hold. God, how was it fair for anyone to be this fucking sexy? he thought.

“I’m tryin’a make good choices here, baby girl, and here you are temptin’ me,” Raph muttered gruffly.

April grinned. She pushed up into him until the slow grind between their bodies had heat pouring off of them. She was burning up down there, and it seemed to be rubbing off on him.

“Here to tempt and be tempted,” April murmured. 

“You’re so fuckin’ hot, Ace.” His breath shuddered out of him. “You’re bad. So bad, baby girl.”

Something in her eyes lit up and instantly went dark. Devastatingly, sexily dark.

“You gonna punish me, Big Daddy?” she asked, voice gone low and syrupy. 

“Somethin’ tells me I should.” He knew bait when he saw it. 

April bit her bottom lip and wiggled her hips. “God, please do.”

“You’re too bad.”

“That special kind you love.”

He kissed her, churrs vibrating the air between them.

“How are you even real?” he asked the universe.

“Am I your fantasy, Daddy?”

“Yeah.”

Ego: stroked. April hummed.

“And you want me?” she asked.

He shuddered. “Yeah.”

She leaned her head up, and her mouth was too kissable to leave wanting. Their bodies moved against each other like waves. Lapping. Crashing. Chaotic and in perfect compliment.

“We’re gonna get each other in so much trouble,” Raphael said, grinning against her lips, his immense shadow looming over her.

April smiled. “I made my bed with you, Raphael. I intend to lie in it.”


	12. Hot Air

Donnie covered his mouth with a fist, cheeks puffed briefly as his chest gurgled.

“ _Whooph_ , ‘scuse me,” he muttered, thumping himself on the chest as he did.

April witnessed a twinkle spark up in Mikey’s eye. He took a drink from his can of orange soda, sighed heartily, then a deep, burbling rumble awakened in his stomach.

Leo fixed him with a look, and Raph waited with bated breath.

Mikey’s chest swelled and erupted with an uproarious belch that could have knocked rubble from the ceiling. Easily on par with a subway train.

“Jeez, Mike,” Leo chuffed, pretending not to be impressed. 

“My man, Mike,” Raph snorted, and he and Mikey shared a knuckle bump.

Even Don shook his head through his grin. But Leo took a drink from his glass, too, and a moment later let out a deep, throaty burp from the pit of his stomach. Not to be outshined, Raph took a drink, too, flexed his chest and shoulders as though pulling something up from within then let out a truly monstrous blast.

All four brothers were in stitches by then, clapping each other on the shell as they fought back peels of laughter. April just put her face in her hand and pretended not to know them, all while she was grinning right along with them. Only Splinter stood at the stove patiently waiting for his kettle to boil, just another day for the elderly father.

* * *

April felt a burble roil at the pit of her stomach. Ooph, she should really pay more attention to what she ate, she thought. Just because the guys could down a two-liter of soda in one sitting didn’t mean she needed to try keeping up. If it weren’t for Splinter, she was pretty sure they’d all be eating pizza and nachos exclusively; her stomach was rebelling over it.

April patted her chest and mercifully felt the bubble dislodge. She meant to disperse it quietly—no need to add fuel to the ruckus of an already cacophonous dojo—but what came up was thick, boisterous, and astonishingly irreverent. She slapped her hand over her mouth so fast it echoed, mortified, and the clatter of practice weapons stopped short as five heads turned and gaped.

“Uhhh. . . . Ex—cuse me?” April stammered, red-faced with embarrassment. 

Four thumbs shot up followed by a simultaneous, _“Nice!”_

Splinter hid his eyes and shook his head.


	13. Threshold

April wanted to wait until Mikey was done with his workout. This had been on her mind for weeks now, and she told herself a few extra minutes waited would not be an issue. So, she sat in Raph’s moonchair and pretended to be on her phone. Donnie was out getting parts for his big project— _Tartaruga Brothers_ was its new name—and Raph went along as backup, and Leo was off in the dojo with Master Splinter.

She told herself to be patient, but patience was not a virtue she had a whole lot of. Not when Mike was sixty deep on the pull-up bar, shadowboxing along to blaring techno and showing no sign of slowing down.

Eventually, she decided _screw it_ and stepped up to him, knocking on the support pole since not even a foghorn would be loud enough to reach him over the music. Mikey paused and smiled at her; he swung up over the top of the bar, hooked it with the backs of his knees, and produced a remote from his waistband. The music cut off leaving her ears ringing, and Mikey’s arms, necklace, and headband dangled under him as he hung at eyelevel with her. 

“Whazzup, Crazy Apes?” he greeted cheerily. 

“Are you at a point where you can pause? I’ve got something I’d like to talk to you about.”

He was on the ground before she could blink; she took a reflexive step back, and he flicked the tails of his headband out of his face.

“Yeah, sure, s’everything okay?” he asked, suddenly earnest like he was expecting bad news.

April wanted to dissuade his worries, but she figured the best way to do that would be to launch right into what she had to discuss. She waved him to follow and took him back to the table where she produced a manila folder from her backpack.

“I’ve been wanting to pick your brain about this for a while now, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. So, just, here,” April spoke while handing him the folder.

Mikey plopped into the nearest barstool with one leg crossed and flipped it open. His head tilted curiously at the sheets of paper inside: three pages of computer paper with printed collages of various sea turtle patterns, some images of ink on skin, others digital designs, and some hand-drawn photographs. He took his time to look at them all. Each one was different but followed a very similar tribal-esque aesthetic. As he went back through, paying more attention to detail, his mouth formed around an interested ‘ooh’ sound. 

“I was hoping they’d provide some inspiration,” April went on when he stayed uncharacteristically silent.

“Rad, rad. Okay. Inspiration for what?” Mike asked innocently. 

“The tattoo I’d like to ask you to do for me.” 

There was a beat. Mikey stilled, gawping at the designs in his hands. April thought maybe she’d overstepped, and she felt heat from embarrassment creeping up her neck and face. Then, he looked up and an absolutely monumental grin spread across his face, wide enough for either side to reach his headband.

“Serious? No joke?” His blue eyes positively sparkled.

April smiled, relieved, and nodded.

He sprung to his feet, suddenly brimming with renewed vigor.

“Can I get Leo? He’s a magician with lines!”

She wasn’t entirely sure what that was supposed to mean, but Mikey was already through the roof, and if he felt it was vital enough to need Leonardo’s input then she wasn’t about to shoot him down.

“Anything you need, Mikey,” she giggled.

* * *

April had expected a little excitement from Mikey at being asked to tattoo her—he was very passionate about the medium, after all—but what she did not expect was how seriously he and Leo were upon diving into concepts and designs. They each stood side-by-side at the table, the reference pages she brought fanned out in front of them while they discussed shapes, styles, and line thickness all the way down to how curved the fins needed to be. They didn’t copy off the pictures she brought so much as modelled their designs off the unified aesthetic they presented. Both had a few sheets of blank paper that they sketched on as they went, pointing to different elements and discussing the merits behind them.

One thing they both agreed on: a whirl on the shell that spiraled in toward the center.

It took a bit, even some banter and a little arguing that April had to help mediate, but once they reached an ultimate agreement April was finally allowed to see what they’d come up with.

It was _beautiful_. 

The shape of the head was anatomical with clear eyes and lines to differentiate the beak. Its front fins were positioned forward as if caught in the motion of flying, the rear flippers shaped to resemble either half of a heart; notches all along the edges of the shell-like scales or flower pedals, and the crest of the shell featured an intricate, looping spiral that seemed to curl endlessly inward, the negative space inside filled with concentric patterning.

“It’s amazing, you guys,” she said.

Mikey positively shined, and Leo smiled.

“Do you know where you want it to go?” Leo asked. 

She pointed over her left shoulder. “I was thinking shoulder blade?”

Mikey clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together excitedly.

“Sweet! So, when do you think you’d be ready to sit down for it?” he asked.

“How about now?” April shrugged.

Mike blinked, and he and his brother looked shared a look of surprise.

“Right now?” Leo said.

April backpedaled, “If that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be right now. If later works better, then—”

“Now’s great! Lemme get my stuff,” Mikey exclaimed in a rush and sprang to his feet, vaulting over the counter and scattering papers on the floor as he sprinted for his room.

“Are you sure about this?” Leo asked, his tone sobered now that they were alone. The distant sound of clattering and things falling reached them from Mikey’s room.

“Of course I am. I’ve been wanting a new tattoo for a long time now, and I thought it would mean a lot to Mikey if he could be the one to do it,” April explained truthfully. “He’s my friend. It would mean a lot to me, too.”

At that, Leo’s expression softened.

“You’re going to spoil him with all the niceties, April,” he chuckled.

“Hey, no need to get jealous of the guy. Here I was hoping you might do my next one.” She winked at the big turtle.

April never thought she would ever see Leonardo beam, but she did, and it was a memory of the ages.

* * *

“Not to be weird, but your shirt’s gonna have to come off,” Mikey informed her once his station was assembled at the table.

But April expected that, and she came prepared. Pulling her top off over her head without hesitation, she laid it over the back of the chair she’d be sitting in and pulled her hair around in an over-the-shoulder ponytail to keep it out of the way. April wasn’t shy, even with an audience; she liked the way she looked in a bikini top and jeans, anyway.

Mikey sat back in his seat, brows raised to the ceiling, and whistled.

“Daaayam, girl, do you come with a calorie count? ‘Cause you’re a _snack_!”

Leo gave his brother a look in her stead. “Mikey.” 

“ _What?_ A turtle speaks the truth!”

April shook her head, not bothering to hide her smile, and lowered herself into her seat. Arms resting over the chair back, she adjusted her legs until she was comfortable. Even Leo settled into a lean on the table to observe while Mikey rustled around with his gear and pulled on a pair of black gloves Donnie designed especially for their anatomy.

“Uhh, also, quick disclaimer: my most forgiving needle size is a lining needle, so . . . I’m gonna have to do your whole tattoo in that,” Mikey explained. 

“Okay.”

_“’Okay?’”_

Mike looked at Leo, the two incredulous. 

“You know I trust you, right Mikey?” April said, peering over her shoulder at him.

“Yeah, sure, and I’m _honored_ , but I also don’t want you faintin’ on Leonardo. He has no idea how to catch girls.”

Leo frowned.

“It’ll be fine. I forgive you in advance,” April assured him.

“Just know that if you do pass out, I _am_ going to laugh at you. Then maybe feel bad about it later.” 

“Duly noted. I’m not going to pass out.”

* * *

She was absolutely going to pass out.

“Let up a little, Mikey, she’s changing color,” Leo said from his seat in front of her.

The buzzing stopped, and as grateful as April was for the break she really, really wanted this to just be over with.

“I’m good, guys,” she insisted. She maybe could have put more effort into making the statement believable, but April was also pretty sure the lair didn’t normally have so many moving lights. 

“No, you’re not. Here.” Leo handed her one of Donnie’s grape juice boxes. 

The cold box was a good centering point, and she held it to her throat for a second. She cracked into it and, wow, okay, that really hit the spot. After maybe a minute the lightheadedness went away, and she felt like she could breathe again.

“April, you gotta say uncle if you need a break. Don’t push yourself, okay?” Mikey said. “It’s cool if you need a breather; you’re not gonna offend me.”

Cool liquid was poured over the sore spot on her shoulder, and he gingerly wiped down with a fresh paper towel. It stung, but something in the liquid took the majority of the burn away. She hung her head and settled her stomach for a minute. The juice box really helped.

“I’m okay.” She let her breath out, more confident this time. 

Leo looked over her at his brother. They must be sharing a look again.

“You sure?” Mike asked. 

She nodded. She said more for her own benefit, “I can do this. How much is left?”

“Lines are done, and I’m like a third-of-the-way through shading.”

April shored herself up, hands flexing over the back of the chair, and tossed him a thumbs up over her shoulder.

“Cue me up, DJ Mikey, I got this.”

Michelangelo laughed, and the tattoo machine buzzed back to life. The shrill hum dulled each time it made contact and moved against her skin, and each time the itching burn of countless needle sticks made her skin tighten and vibrate all the way down to her toes. It burned. It itched. It made her want to tap her feet, but she couldn’t, so she drummed the chair back with her fingernails and buried her head in her arms. But covering her head only made the pain come into a sharper focus, so she forced herself to look at something. Anything. She wound up counting the scutes on Leo’s plastron.

“How did you guys even get into this, anyway?” she asked.

Leo looked up and at Mikey who paused to adjust the power cord. The eldest brother smiled.

“Would you believe Vin Diesel in _xXx_?” Leo said.

April grinned. “You’re kidding.”

“Not even a little, babe. Raph wanted those X’s on the back of his neck _so bad_ he started havin’ us draw ‘em on with a Sharpie,” Mikey said, a smirk written all over his voice.

April used the break in his tattooing to laugh. “I’m honestly not even surprised.”

“Yeah, well, Mikey caught the bug after that and started camping dumpsters outside tattoo shops all over the city. Pretty soon we had enough gear to start building machines of our own.”

“With Donnie’s help, thank you very much. Props to ma boy in purple. Pro hands only on my machine,” Mikey added proudly. She winced when the needle went back to her skin. 

“Splinter was okay with you guys just deciding to just start tattooing each other?” she asked. Somehow she didn’t envision their father being too keen on that in the beginning. 

“Master Splinter was okay with it so long as we educated ourselves first. First aid and safety were drilled in long before he even allowed us to practice on dummy surfaces. By time we figured out what was safe to use for ink and what needles were strong enough to get through our scales, Mike here all but mastered tribal.”

“Thank you, Mr. Calligrapher Savant,” Mikey sang back proudly. 

A thought occurred to her then. “So, what are you using for ink anyway?”

“Relax, it’s the same stuff the shops use,” Mikey assured her, catching the undercurrent of worry in her tone. “Lotta’ shops toss their ink extra when the labels expire ‘cause legal reasons, but it keeps good for a long time so long as it stays sealed.”

April nodded. “Makes sense.” Her brow furrowed and mouth skewed when the needle began shading over bone.

When Leo offered his hand, April took it and squeezed hard, face buried in the crook of her arm. The sound she let out into the chair was equal parts anguished, primal, and deeply cathartic. The quick pause Mikey took to clean was a welcome mercy, and April put her mouth to her wrist and let her breath out in a balmy _whuff_.

“You doin’ okay?” Mike checked in again.

She threw a thumbs up over her shoulder in lieu of words, because anything that came out of her mouth right then would probably not have been kind. Leo retrieved her juice box from the counter, and she gratefully resumed drinking. The needle returned with a dull hum, and April settled herself with a breath, still gripping Leo’s hand.

“So,” she continued. Talking provided a welcome distraction. “Why didn’t Raph get the X’s?”

Leo looked at his brother, and Mike paused to peer over April’s back. His grin was positively Cheshire.

“‘Cause he friggin’ hates needles,” Mikey gleamed.

_“No,”_ April smirked. It was like digging up a scandal on the president. All the punishment the big red bruiser could take and dish back out, but needles were what did him in?

“No lie! He fainted on the practice run! Ten seconds worth of pokes and— _wham_! Sunk like a rock!” Mikey tipped back in his seat he was cackling as hard as a hyena.

“He can take scarification but not a tattoo needle?” April was incredulous.

Even Leo shook his head as he laughed lightly. “The guy doesn’t make sense sometimes.”

April nearly shrugged, but Mikey was already getting back to work.

“Well, I guess everyone’s limits are different. I mean—Shredder didn’t scare me enough to keep me off that roof, but one of my coworkers gets a nosebleed and I’m on the ground heaving.”

Leo nodded, and behind her Mikey snickered.

“Yo, you showed up with that canister and I swear I saw steam comin’ out of his helmet. Ooh, _man_ , Shreddy was _maayaad_!” Mikey exclaimed.

“It was reckless of you to interfere like that, April. You could have been killed.”

She sensed a lecture brewing, so decided to nip it in the bud. “Trust me, Leo, I learned my lesson in spades when he tossed me off. No more near fistfights with robot samurais for me.”

_“Good,”_ both brothers said in unison. 

Several sharp _whoops_ echoed down the spillway tunnel then, foretelling a triumphant return. Water erupted into the splash zone as Donnie and Raph sprung out of the flying mist like shots from a canon. Riding high on adrenaline from the trip above ground or the ride through the tunnels, possibly both, they bounced around wide-eyed and still shouting.

“ _Whooow!_ Did you see you? You were a badass, Donnie, total badass!” Raph hollered.

Donnie was rambling on about a thousand words a minute, feet positively spring loaded. “I can’t believe we pulled that off! That was so cool! Did you see me? I came in like— _shwooh_! And you were like— _raaa_! Man, I flipped that guy like a pancake! That was awesome!”

“They never saw us comin’, brother!”

Raph’s hand went up, and Donnie clapped it so hard it echoed off the walls.

“Care to fill us in on the juicy details?” Leo called out over the hype, amused.

The two turned, and there was a beat where neither Raph nor Donnie knew what to make of the congregation before them. But it clicked a second later, and Raph grinned ear to ear and Donnie lifted his goggles to the top of his head, eyes the size of saucers behind his glasses.

“Hey, no way!” Raph shouted, and he and Don jogged over.

“Let me see—let me see—let me see!” Don ducked nimbly around him to get there first.

“Hey, hey, hey, respect the workspace! Can’t you see I’m sterile? You can check it out once it’s done,” Mikey complained, shooing his brothers off with the wave of a gloved hand. 

April and Leo locked eyes, and they both shook their heads.

Don and Raph still managed to bull their way around each other to get a look, and if their noises were anything to go by they were impressed. It settled nerves April didn’t even know she had. Not that she didn’t have total faith in Mikey’s ability, but getting something permanent etched into her skin always came with a certain degree of anxiety.

“That looks so cool,” Raph said.

“April, it’s beautiful,” Don chimed.

She smiled, eager as much to finally see as she was for this to be over with.

Donatello stepped around the table to inspect the various sketches and printouts still scattered there while Raph loomed.

“Bro. You’re in my light,” Mikey said.

“Oh. My bad.”

Raph stepped back, and April tensed when the needle went over the crest of her shoulder blade again. She felt the vibrations all the way through to the front of her sternum. She groaned and buried her head, hand clenched so tight her knuckles were numb.

“How’s she holdin’ up?” Raph asked.

“Pretty good. She needs to work on her breathing, though,” Leo replied. 

“Been at it for long?”

“Not long, maybe half an hour.”

Raph whistled. “Not bad, Ace. Looks like you’re almost there.”

She groaned and gave a wimpy thumbs up in reply.

Leo chuckled. “She’s doing better than you ever did.”

At that, Raph chuffed, and April picked her head up in time to see Leo take a good-natured slug to the shoulder and a parting, “Smart aleck,” as Raph walked around the table to Don to help him unpack. The needle went over that spot a few more times, and she held onto Leo with brutal force—wow, she totally forgot she was even still holding his hand—and thought she saw the ninja wince. 

“Sorry,” April muttered.

“It’s okay. You’re almost there.” Leo gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and covered it with his other. “Deep breaths.”

She nodded shallowly, pinched her eyes shut with a low intake through her nose, and made herself go back to counting scutes.

* * *

“Aaaaaaand—done!” Mikey sang.

April nearly threw her head back in relief when his hands left her back.

“Thank _fuck_ ,” she yelled at the ceiling.

Mikey sniggered while scooting back and gave her shoulder a final wash, wiping away smears of red blood and black ink. She gave Leo back his hands and stretched out her legs. Who knew sitting through a few hundred thousand stabs could be so exhausting? 

Leonardo shook out his hand and stood up while Mikey began disassembling and cleaning his area. She took the aid that was offered, and Leo steadied her as she staggered to her feet, thighs numb where the chair bit into them for close to an hour. There was a full-length mirror nearby at Donnie’s workstation, but she couldn’t turn her head far enough to get a good look at it. Raph handed her a smaller, personal mirror, and she took it gladly. 

The guys stood on all sides of her, watching her reaction. Her hand went to her mouth, and April felt tears prickle in the corners of her eyes.

“Mikey, it’s perfect,” she said past the lump forming in her throat.

He beamed ear to ear and caught her when April threw her arms around his neck, careful not to touch her tattoo.

She murmured into his shoulder, “Thank you so much.”

“Any time, Crazy Apes,” Mikey smiled, hugging her back tightly.

* * *

A little bit of ointment and some plastic wrap later, Michelangelo finished going over aftercare, broke down his workstation, and bagged up all the pieces of his machine to be cleaned. Before April could look for her shirt, Raphael was already handing it to her. She took it with a none-too-subtle brush of his hand and slowly pulled it back on over her head. Okay, ouch. Not going with that button-down top really came back to bite her right then.

Noticing her struggle, Raph came up behind her and carefully tugged the bottom down the rest of the way.

“Thanks, Red,” she said and faced him.

“Sure, Ace. Kinda wish you’d told me you were gonna do this, I woulda’ been here.”

“Sorry. I just managed to work up the nerve to ask while I was here. But, I’ll tell you what—” April leaned up on her toes, and her arms found their favorite spot around his neck as Raph leaned down, hands on a safe zone low on her waist. “—I promise you’ll be here for the next one.”

Raph grinned. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, Leo’s doin’ her next one. Only fair since I got to do her first,” Mikey proclaimed, finally peeling out of his last layer of gloves. 

“No shit? That’s awesome. Leo’s great at flowers n’ calligra— _hey_!”

April couldn’t help but giggle. Somehow, Leo’s artistic preference did not surprise her. And speaking of fair. She extricated herself from Raph while he was distracted glaring at his brother.

“So, what do I owe you, Mikey?” April asked.

“Owe me? You don’t owe me nothin’, April.” Michelangelo looked surprised by the suggestion.

“No, I’m serious. I can’t ask you to do something like this for free, friend or not.”

He thought about it. “Well, uhm, how about you order us pizza next time to come over? Oooh, I saw an ad for Ten-Topping-Tuesday for that place on 35th! That sound good to you?”

“If that’s what you want, then absolutely. But that still leaves the matter of your tip.” 

Surprise translated this time into confusion, but before he could say anything about it April already had his head in her hands and planted a firm, lingering kiss on his cheek. Every atom of Mikey’s body went still, and when she pulled away his eyes were wide as saucers and mouth shaped in an ‘oh,’ color aflame across both cheeks. He smiled so wide April swore she saw the stars floating around his head.

Raph’s jaw hit the floor.

“Paid in full,” Mike proclaimed, more than a little dazed.


	14. Slide

The attack came so fast she had no time to brace for it. She was walking casually past the entertainment center on her way to ask Donnie a question, and when passing the couch, she ran the tips of her fingers along the back entirely by absentminded reflex.

April was no more than halfway past when a dark mass shot up, snatched her by the waist, and dragged her floundering over the back of the couch. She squealed in sudden shock, kicking her legs and fighting the indomitable grip. In half a second, she was giggling despite the attack, landing on her back on a broad, flat chest.

“Gotcha,” Raph proclaimed with utmost satisfaction.

April glowered over her shoulder at him, but before she could say anything he drew in a cavernous breath, dipped his head down quick, and blew a monstrous raspberry on the side of her neck.

April shrieked. Arms pinned at her sides, she could do little more than flail wildly.

A minute later, the sound of a slap on plastron echoed off the walls, and April giggle-shouted, _“You ass!”_

Raphael laughed riotously.


End file.
